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The Connoisseur 
and Other Stories 


Books by 
WALTER DE LA MARE 


In Verse 
POEMS (out of print) 
THE LISTENERS AND OTHER POEMS 
MOTLEY AND OTHER POEMS 
FLORA 
POEMS: IQOI-I918 
THE VEIL aAnpD OTHER POEMS 
SONGS OF CHILDHOOD 
PEACOCK PIE 
A CHILD’S DAY 


COME HITHER! 
AN ANTHOLOGY WITH NOTES 


In Prose 


HENRY BROCKEN 

THE RETURN 

THE RIDDLE AND OTHER TALES 
MEMOIRS OF A MIDGET 

THE CONNOISSEUR anp OTHER STORIES 
THE THREE MULLA-MULGARS 
BROOMSTICKS aND OTHER TALES 
CROSSINGS (A Play for Children) 
RUPERT BROOKS AND THE INe 


TELLECTUAL IMAGINATION (4 
Lecture) 


e 
CONNOISSEUR 


le Se ER SEBS 





¥. 








NEW YORK MCMXXVI 
ALF RED~-A- KNOPF 





COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY WALTER DE LA MARE 


MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERIOA 


Of the stories included in this volume “Mr. 
Kempe” and “Pretty Poll” have appeared serially 
in the London Mercury; and ““The Wharf” in the 
Queen. The author makes his grateful acknowl- 
edgments to the Editors of these periodicals. 





CONTENTS 


Mr. KEMPE 
MIssING 

THE CONNOISSEUR. 
DISILLUSIONED 
THe Nap 

PRETTY POLL 

AtL_ Hattows 
THE WHARF 


Tue Lost Track 





The Connoisseur 
and Other Stories 





Mr. Kempe 


T was a mild, clammy evening; and the 
i| swing-door of the tap-room stood wide 
open. The brass oil-lamp suspended 
from the rafter had not yet been lit; a 
small misty drizzle was drifting between 

; the lime-washed walls and the over- 
arching trees on the further side of the lane; and from 
my stool at the counter I could commune—as often as I 
felt inclined—with the wild white eye of the Blue Boar 
which fleered in at the window from the hanging sign. 

Autumnal scents, failing day, rain so gentle and per- 
sistent—such phenomena as these have a slightly soporific 
effect on the human consciousness. It is as though its 
busy foreground first becomes blurred, then blotted out; 
and then—the slow steady sweep of the panorama of 
dream that never ceases its strange motioning. The ex- 
perience is brief, I agree. The footlights, headlights, sky- 
lights brighten again: the panorama retires! 

Excluding the landlady, who occasionally waddled in 
from her dusky retreat behind the bar, there were only 
three of us in the tap-room—three chance customers now 
met together for the first time: myself; a smallish man 
with an unusually high crown to his head, and something 
‘engagingly monkey-like in his face; and a barrel-shaped 
person who sat humped up on a stool between us in an old 
3 





Mr. Kempe 


shooting-jacket and leather leggings, his small eyes set 
close together on either side a red nose. 

I had been the last to put in an appearance, but had 
not, it seemed, damped anything in the nature of a con- 
versation. Such weather does not conduce to it. But 
three may be some sort of company where two is none; 
and what, at last, set us more or less at our ease was an 
“automatic machine’’ that stood in the corner of the tap- 
room under a coloured lithograph of Shotover, the winner 
of the Derby in 1882. It was a machine of an unusual 
kind since it gave its patronisers nothing tangible for their 
penny—not even their ladylove on a slip of cardboard, ora 
clinging jet of perfume. | 

It reminds me now of the old Miracle plays or Moral- 
ities. Behind its glass it showed a sort of grotto, like a 
whited sepulchre, with two compartments, over which 
descended the tresses of a weeping willow. You slipped 
a penny into the slot, and presently a hump-backed mom- 
met in a rusty-black cowl jerked into view from the cell on 
the left. He stood there a moment in the midst—fixedly 
looking at you: then decamped into the gloom again. 

But this was if your luck was out—or so I assumed. 
If it was in, then a nymph attired in skirts of pink muslin 
wheeled out of the flowery bower on the eastern side; and 
danced a brief but impassioned pas seul. 

My three pennies had brought me one fandango from 
the latter and two prolonged scrutinies from the former 
—a proportion decided on, no doubt, by the worldly-wise 
manufacturer of the machine. But this was not all. In 
intention at least he must have been a practical optimist. 
For if the mwymph responded to your penny, you were in- 
vited to slip yet another coin into another slot—but before 


4 


Mr. Kempe 


you could count ten. This galvanised the young lady 
into a giddy pursuit of the numbskull in the black hood— 
a pursuit, however, which ended merely in the retirement 
of them both behind the scenes. 

The man in leggings had watched my experiments with 
eyes almost as motionless as plums in a pudding. It was 
my third penny that had wooed out the nymph. But the 
“grandfather’s clock” in the corner had ticked loudly at 
least five times before I managed to insert a fourth. It 
was a moment of rapt—of an aching—excitement. What 
a teeming passion showed itself in that wild horse-play 
behind the glass! And then, alas, the machinery ceased to 
whirr ; the clock ticked on; the faint rustle of the drifting 
rain sounded once more at the open door; I returned to 
my stool; and the landlady retired into her den. 

“Bang goes fourpence,” I remarked a little sheepishly. 
“Still, mine was about the right average, I suppose.” 

The man in the leather leggings—as if the problem were 
not for his solution—at once turned his little eyes towards 
our companion in the corner, whose face was still wreathed 
with the friendliest of grimaces at my efforts. 

“Well, now,” he took me up, “I’m not so sure. In my 
view, that minx there sidles out too often. Most young 
men and more old ones would be content with once in six. 
I would myself. It’s our credulity. We live on hopes, 
however long they may be deferred. We live, as you 
might say; but how many of us learn? How many of us 
want to make sure?” He paused for an answer: his small 
eyes fixed in his face. “Not one in a million,” he uc- 
cided. 

I stole another look into the narrow darkness of the 
‘Young Lady’s Bower. 

5 


Mr. Kempe 


“Oh,” he interrupted, “I wasn’t thinking merely of the 
‘eternal feminine,’ as they call it. That’s only one of the 
problems; though even an answer to that might be in- 
teresting. There’s Free Will, for example; there’s Moral 
Responsibility ; and such little riddles as where we all come 
from and where we are going to. Why, we don’t even 
know what we are—in ourselves, Imean. And how many 
of us have tried to find out?” 

The man in leggings withdrew his stare and groped out 
a hand towards his pint-pot. ‘Have you?” he enquired. 

The dark-eyed, wizened face lit up once more with its 
curiously engaging smile. “Well, you see, I was once a 
schoolmaster, and from an official point of view, I sup- 
pose, it is part of the job. To find answers, mean. But, 
as you'll agree, we temporise; we compromise. On the 
other hand, I once met quite by chance, as we call it, a 
man who had spent I should guess a good many years on 
that last problem. All by himself, too. You might almost 
describe it as a kind of pilgrimage—though I’m not 
anxious to repeat it. It was my turn for a lesson.” 

“And what was fis solution?’ I inquired. 

“Have you ever been to Porlock—the Weir?” the little 
man enquired. 

I shook my head. 

“TI mention Porlock,” he went on, ‘“‘because if you had. 
ever been there, the place I’m thinking of might perhaps 
call it to mind. Though mine was on a different scale—a 
decidedly different scale. I doubt, for example, if it will 
ever become one of those genial spots frequented by week- 
end tourists and chars-d-banc. In the days I’m speaking 
of—twenty years or more ago—there wasn’t even the 
rudiments of an inn in the place. Only a beershop about 
6 


Mr. Kempe 


half the size of this tap-room, with a population to match 
—just a huddle of fishermen’s cottages tucked in under 
the cliff. 

“T was walking at the time, covering unfamiliar ground, 
and had managed to misread my map. My aim had been 
to strike into a cliff-path that runs more or less parallel 
with the coast ; but I had taken the wrong turn at the cross- 
roads. Once astray, it seemed better manners to keep on. 
How can you tell what chance may have secreted in her 
sleeve, even when you don’t put pennies in slots? 

“I persuaded an old lady to give me tea at one of the 
cottages, and asked my way. Visitors were rare events, 
it seemed. At first she advised me to turn back; I couldn’t 
do better than that. But after further questioning, she 
told me at last of a lower cliff track or path, some miles 
apparently this side of the one I had in view. She marked 
it out for me with her rheumatic old forefinger on the 
table-cloth. Follow this path far enough, I gathered, it 
would lead me into my right road at last. 

“Not that she suggested my making the attempt. By 
no means. It was a matter of seven miles or more. And 
neither the natives of the village nor even chance visitors, 
it seemed, were tempted to make much use of this partic- 
ular route.” 

“Why not?” enquired the man in leggings, and im- 
mediately coughed, as if he had thought better of it. 

“That’s what I am coming to,” replied the schoolmaster 
—as though he had been lying in wait for the question. 
“You see my old lady had volunteered her last piece of 
information with a queerish look in her eyes—like some 
shy animal slipping into cover. She was telling me the 
truth, but not, I fancied, the whole truth. 

7 


Mr. Kempe 


“Naturally I acked what was wrong with the path; and 
was there anything of interest on the way or at the end 
of it—worth such a journey? Once more she took a long 
slow look at me, as if my catechism were rather more 
pressing than the occasion warranted. There was a some- 
thing marked on the map, she had been given to under- 
stand—‘just an old, ancient building, like.’ 

“Sure enough there was: though unfortunately, long 
wear of the one I carried had not only left indecipherable 
more than an old English letter or two of any record of 
it, but had rubbed off a square half-mile or so of the 
country round about it. 

“It was proving a little irksome to draw Truth out of 
her well, and when innocently enough I asked if there 
Was any one in charge of the place, the old lady was 
obviously disconcerted. She didn’t seem to think it needed 
being taken charge of ; though she confessed at last that a 
house ‘not nearly so old, sir, you will understand,’ stood 
near-by, in which lived a gentleman of the name of 
Kempe. 

“It was easier sailing now that we had come to Mr. 
Kempe. The land, it appeared, including the foreshore 
—but apart from the chapel—had been in his family since 
the beginning of time. Mr. Kempe himself had formerly 
been in the church—conformist or otherwise—and had 
been something of a traveller, but had returned home with 
an invalid wife many years before. 

“Mrs. Kempe was dead now; and there had been no 
children, ‘none, at least, as you would say grew up to 
what might be called living.” And Mr. Kempe himself 
had not only been ailing for some little time, but might, 
for all my informant knew apparently, be dead himself. 
8 


Mr. Kempe 


Nevertheless, there was still a secretive look in the faded 
eyes—almost as if she believed Mr. Kempe had discovered 
little methods of his own against the onsets of mortality! 
Anyhow, she.couldn’t tell; nobody ever went that way 
now, so far as she was aware. There was the new road 
up above. What’s more, tidings of Mr. Kempe’s end, I 
gathered, however solitary, would not exactly put the vil- 
lage into mourning. 

“It was already latish afternoon; and in that windless 
summer weather walking had been a rather arduous form 
of amusement. I was tired. A snowy low-pitched upper- 
room overlooking the sea was at my disposal if I wanted 
it for a night or two. And yet, even while I was follow- 
ing this good soul up her n-rrow staircase, I had already 
decided to push on in the direction of Mr. Kempe. If 
need be, I would come back that evening. Country people 
are apt to be discreet with strangers—however open in ap- 
pearance. Those shrewd old eyes—when at least they 
showed themselves—had hinted that even with an inch to 
the mile a map-maker cannot exhaust a countryside. The 
contours, I had noticed, were unusual. Besides, Mr. 
Kempe was not less likely to be interesting company be- 
cause he was a recluse. 

“T put down five shillings on account for my room, and 
the kindly old creature laid them aside in an ornament on 
her mantelpiece. There they lie still, for all I know. I 
have never reclaimed them.” 

The man in leggings once more turned his large shape- 
less face towards the schoolmaster, but this time he made 
no audible comment. 

“And did you find Mr. Kempe?” I enquired. 

The schoolmaster smiled, looking more like a philan- 


9 


Mr. Kempe 


thropic monkey than ever. “I set out at once: watched by 
the old lady from her porch, until, with a wave of my hand 
for adieu, I turned out of the village street, and she was 
hidden from sight. There was no mistaking the path— 
even though it led off over a stile into a patch of stinging- 
nettles, and then past a boggy goose-pond. 

“After a few hundred yards it began to dip towards the 
shore, keeping more or less level with the sea for a mile 
or so until it entered a neat and sandy cove—the refuge 
even in summer of all sorts of flotsam and sea-rubbish; 
and a positive maelstrom, I should imagine, when the 
winter gales sweep in. ‘Towards the neck of this cove the 
wheel-marks in the thin turf faded out, and the path 
meandered on for a while beside a brook and under some 
fine ash trees, then turned abruptly to the right, and almost 
due north. The bleached bows of a tarred derelict boat 
set up on end and full of stones—The Orion—was my last 
touch with civilisation. 

“It was a quiet evening; the leaves and grasses shone 
green and motionless, the flowers standing erect on their 
stalks under the blue sky, as if carved out of wax. The 
air was uncommonly sweet, with its tang of the sea. Tak- 
ing things easy like this, it was well worth while to be 
alive. I sat down and rested, chewing a grass-stalk and 
watching the friendly lapping sea. Then up and on. 

“After about an hour’s steady walking, the path be- 
gan once more to ascend. It had by now led shorewards 
again, though I was softly plodding on out of sight and all 
but out of sound of the tide. Dense neglected woods 
rose on either side of me, and though wherever the sun 
could pierce in there were coverts in plenty, hardly a cry 
of insect or bird stirred the air. To all intents I might 
IO 


Mr. Kempe 


have been exploring virgin country. Now and again in- 
deed the fallen bole of a tree or matted clumps of bramble, 
briony, and traveller’s joy compelled me to make a wid- 
ish detour. But I was still steadily ascending, and the 
view tended at length to become more and more open; 
with here and there a patch of bright green turf and a 
few scrub bushes of juniper or sprouting tamarisk. 

“Shut in as I had been, until this moment it had been 
difficult to guess how far above me the actual plateau lay, 
or precisely how far below, the sea—though I had caught 
distant glimpses now and again of its spreading silver and 
the far horizon. Even at this point it would have been 
flattery to call the track a path. The steeper its incline, 
the more stony and precarious became one’s footing. And 
then at last I rounded the first of a series of bluffs or 
headlands, commanding a spectacular view of the coast be- 
hind me, though nothing of what lay in front. 

“The tiny village had vanished. About a hundred and 
fifty feet beneath the steep on whose margin I was stand- 
ing—with a flaming bush of gorse here and there, and an 
occasional dwarf oak as gray as silk in the evening light 
—the incoming tide gently mumbled against its rocks, 
rocks of a peculiar patchy green and black. 

“T took another look at my map, enjoyed a prolonged 
‘breather,’ and went on. Steadily up and inward now and 
almost due north-west. And once more untended thickets 
rose dense on either side, and the air was oppressed with 
a fragrance sickly as chloroform. Some infernal winter 
tempest or equinoctial gale must have lately played havoc 
here. Again and again I had to clamber over the bole 
or through the head-twigs of monster trees felled by 
the wind, and still studded with a few sprouting post- 

II 


Mr. Kempe 


mortem pale-green buds. It was like edging between this 
world and the next. 

“Apart, too, from the gulls with their saturnine gabbling, 
and flights of clanging oyster-catchers on the rocks below, 
what birds I saw were birds of prey: buzzards and kestrels 
chiefly, suspended as if by a thread from space, their small 
heads stooping between their quivering wings. And once 
I overheard what I took to be the cough of a raven to its 
mate. About twenty minutes afterwards, my second bluff 
hove into sight. And I paused for a while, staring at it. 

“For ordinary purposes I have a fairly good head. And 
yet I confess that before venturing further I took a pro- 
longed look at this monster and at the faint patternings of 
the path that lay before me, curving first in, then out, 
along and across the face of the cliff, and just faintly etch- 
ing its precipitous surface as it edged out of sight. It’s 
a foolish thing perhaps to imagine oneself picked out 
clean against the sky on a precipitous slope—if, that is, 
you mean to put the fancy into action. You get a sort 
of double-barrelled view of your mortal body crouching 
there semi-erect, little better than a framework of bones. 

“Not that there was as yet any positive risk or danger. 
The adventure would have been child’s play, no doubt, 
even for an amateur mountaineer. You had only to pick 
your way, keeping a sharp eye on the loose stones, and— 
to avoid megrims—skirting round the final curve without 
pausing to look up or to look down. A modest man might 
possibly try all fours. Still, after that, it did not surprise 
me to remember that visitors to these parts had usually 
preferred some other method of reaching the road and 
country up above. Pleasure may be a little over-spiced 
with excitement.” 

12 


Mr. Kempe 


“Steep, eh?” ejeculated the man in leggings. 

“Yes, steep,” replied the schoolmaster; “though taken 
as mere scenery,” he continued, “there was nothing to 
find fault with. Leagues and leagues of sea stretched out 
to the vague line of the horizon like an immense plate, 
mottled green and blue. A deep pinkish glow, too, had 
begun to spread over the eastern skies, mantling up into 
heights of space made the more abysmal in appearance by 
wisps of silver cirrus. 

“Now and again I lay back with my heels planted on 
what was left of the path, and rested a moment, staring 
up into that infinity. Now and again I all but decided to 
go back. But sheer curiosity to see the mysterious 
hermitage of which I had heard, and possibly the shame 
of proving myself yet another discredited visitor, lured 
me on. Solitude, too, is like deepening water to a swim- 
mer: that also lures you on. Except for an occasional 
bloated, fork-tailed, shrimp-like insect that showed itself 
when a flake of dislodged stone went scuttering down into 
the abyss below, I was the only living creature abroad. 
Once more I pushed cautiously forward. But it was an 
evil-looking prospect, and the intense silence of the evening 
produced at last a peculiar sense of unreality and isola- 
tion. My universe seemed to have become a mere picture 
—and I out of place init. It was as if I had been mis- 
laid and forgotten. 

“T hung by now, I suppose, about two or three hundred 
feet above the sea; and maybe a hundred or so beneath the 
summit of the wall which brushed my left elbow. Wind- 
worn boulders, gently whispered over by saplings of ash 
or birch, jutted shallowly here and there above and be- 
low me. Marine plants lifted their wind-bitten flowers 


13 


Mr. Kempe 


from inch-wide ledges on which their seeds had somehow 
found a lodging. The colours mirrored in sky and water 
increased in brilliance and variety as the sunset advanced, 
though here was only its reflection; and the flat ocean be- 
neath lapped soundlessly on; its cream-like surf fringing 
here and there the very base of the cliff, beneath which, 
like antediluvian monsters, vast rocks lay drowsing. I 
refrained from examining them too closely. 

“But even ii—minute intrusive mote that I was, creep- 
ing across the steep of wall—even if I had been so in- 
clined, there was little opportunity. ‘Though for centuries 
wind, frost and rain had been gnawing and fretting to 
some purpose at the face of the cliff, sure foothold and 
finger-hold became ever more precarious. An occasional 
ringing reverberation from far below suggested, too, that 
even the massive bulk of rock itself might be honeycombed 
to its foundations. What once had been a path was now 
the negation of one. And the third prodigious bluff to- 
wards which I presently found myself slowly, almost 
mechanically, advancing, projected into space as a knife- 
like angle; cut sharp in gigantic silhouette against the 
skies. 

“TI made a bewildering attempt to pretend to be casual 
and cheerful—even to whistle. But my lips were dry, 
and breath or courage failed me. None the less I had 
contrived to approach within twenty yards or so of that 
last appalling precipice, when, as if a warning voice had 
whispered the news in my ear, I suddenly realised the 
predicament I was in. To turn back now was impossible. 
Nor had I a notion of what lay on the further side of the 
headland. For a few instants my bones and sinews re- 
belled against me, refusing to commit themselves to the 


14 


Mr. Kempe 


least movement. I could do no more than cling spasmod- 
ically with my face to the rock. 

“But to hang there on and on and wither like an 
autumnal fly was out of the question. One single hour of 
darkness, one spinning puff of wind, would inevitably dis- 
lodge me. But darkness was some hours distant; the 
evening was of a dead calm; and I thanked my stars there 
was no sun to roast and confuse me with his blaze and 
heat. I thanked my stars—but where would my carcass 
be when those stars began to show themselves in the com- 
ing night? All this swept through my mind in an in- 
stant. Complete self-possession was the one thing need- 
ful. I realised that too. And then a frightful cold came 
over me; sweat began to pour off my body; the very soul 
within me became sick with fear. 

“T use the word soul because this renewed nausea was 
something worse than physical. I was a younger man 
then, and could still in the long run rely on nerve and 
muscle, but fear turns one’s blood to water—that terror 
of the spirit, and not merely of the mind or instinct. It 
_ bides its moment until the natural edges off into—into 
the unknown. 

“Not that Nature, as we call her, even in the most con- 
genial surroundings, is the sort of old family nurse that 
makes one’s bed every morning, and tucks one up with a 
‘God bless you’ overnight. Like the ants and aphides and 
the elvers and the tadpoles, she produces us humans in 
millions; leaving us otherwise to our own devices. We 
can’t even guess what little stratagems for the future she 
may be hiding up her sleeve. We can’t even guess. But 
that’s a mere commonplace. After all, so far as we can 
prove, she deserves only a small ‘n’ to her name. | 


15 


Mr. Kempe 


“What I’m suggesting is merely that though she ap- 
peared to have decoyed me into this rat-trap with all her 
usual artlessness, she remained a passive enemy, and what 
now swathed me in like a breath of poison—as, with face, 
palms, knees and belly pressed close against the rock, I 
began once more working softly on from inch-wide ledge 
and inch-deep weed, my tongue like tinder, my eyes seem- 
ing to magnify every glittering atom they tried to focus 
—was the consciousness of some power or influence be- 
yond Nature’s. It was not so much of death—and I 
actually with my own eyes saw my body inertly hurtling to 
its doom beneath—that I was afraid. What terrified me 
beyond words to express was some positive presence here 
in a more desperate condition even than I. I was being 
waylaid. 

“When you come to such a pass as this, you lose count 
of time. I had become an automaton—little better than 
a beetle obeying the secret dictates of what I believe they 
call the Life-Urge; and how precisely I contrived to face 
and to circumnavigate that last bit of precipice, I cannot 
recall. But this once done, in a few minutes I was in 
comparative safety. I found myself sluggishly creep- 
ing again along a path which had presently widened 
enough to allow me to turn my face outwards from the 
rock, and even to rest. And even though the precipice 
beneath me was hardly less abrupt and enormous, and the 
cliff-face above actually overhung my niche, for the time 
being I was out of physical danger. I was, as they say, 
my own man again; had come back. : 

“It was high time. My skull seemed to have turned 
to ice; I was wet through; my finger-nails were split; my 
16 


Mr. Kempe 


hands covered with blood; and my clothes would have dis- 
graced a tramp. 

“But all trace of fear had left me, and what now swept 
my very wits away in this almost unendurable reaction 
was the sheer beauty of the scene that hung before my 
eyes. Half reclining, not daring yet to stir, my out- 
stretched hands clasping two knobs of rocks, my eyeballs 
gently moving to and fro, I sat there and feasted on the 
amazing panorama spread out before me; realising none 
the less that I was in the presence of something—how can 
I express it?—of something a little different from, 
stranger and less human than—well, our old friend Na- 
ture. 

“The whole face of this precipice was alight with colour 
—dazzling green and orange, drifts of snow and purple— 
campion, sea-pink, may-weed, samphire, camomile, lichen, 
stonecrop, with fleshy and aromatic plants that I knew not 
even the names of, sweeping down drift beyond drift 
into a narrow rock-bound tranquil bay of the darkest 
emerald and azure, and then sweeping up once more drift 
beyond drift into the vault of the sky, its blue fretted 
over as if by some master architect with silvery inter- 
lacings, a scattered feather-like fleece of vapour. 

“The steady cry too, possibly amplified by echo, of 
the incoming tide reached me here once more; a whisper 
and yet not toneless. And on and on into the distance 
swept the gigantic coast line, crowned summit to base 
with its emerald springtide woods. 

“Still slightly intoxicated as I was by the terror and 
danger in which I had been, and which were now for the 
moment past and gone, I gave myself ample opportunity 


17 


Mr. Kempe 


to rest and to drink in this prodigious spectacle. And yet, 
as I lay there, still at a dizzy altitude, midway between 
sea and sky but in perfect safety, the odd conviction per- 
sisted, that though safe, I was not yet secure. It was as 
if I were still facing some peril of the mind, and absurd 
and irrational though it may sound there was a vague dis- 
quieting hint within me of disappointment—as if I had 
lost without realising it a unique opportunity. And yet, 
all this medley of hints and intuitions was wholly sub- 
sidiary to the conviction that from some one point in 
all this vacancy around me a steady devouring gaze was 
fixed on me—that I was being watched.” 

Once more our hard-headed friend fidgeted uneasily 
on his stool. 

“It sounds absurd, I agree,” the schoolmaster caught 
him up. “Simply because, apart from the seabirds and 
the clouds, I had been and was still the only moving ob- 
ject within view. The sudden apparition of me crawling 
around that huge nose of rock must have been as con- 
spicuous as it was absurd. Besides, myriads of concealed 
eyes in the dense forest towering conically up on the 
other side of the narrow bay beneath me, and looming 
ever more mistily from headland to headland towards 
the north and west, could have watched my every move- 
ment. A thousand arrows from unseen archers con- 
cealed on the opposing heights might at any instant have 
transfixed me where I lay. One becomes conscious, too, 
of the sort of empty settled stare which fixes an intruder 
into such solitudes. It is at the same time vacant, enor- 
mous and hostile. 

“But I don’t mean that. I still mean something far 
more definite—and more dangerous, too, than that; and 
18 


Mr. Kempe 


I keep to it even if this precise memory may have been 
affected by what came after. For I was soon to learn 
that in actual fact I was being watched; and by as acute 
and unhuman a pair of eyes as I have ever seen in mor- 
tal head. 

“With infinite caution I rose to my feet again at last, 
and continued my journey. The path grew steadily 
easier; soil succeeded to bare rock, and this must not 
very long before, I discovered, have been trodden by 
other human feet than mine. There were marks of 
hobnails between its tussocks of grass and moss and 
thrift. 

“It presently descended a little, and then in a while, 
from out of the glare of the evening, I found myself 
entering a broader and heaviiy-shaded track leading 
straight onwards and tunnelling inland into the woods. 
It was, to my amazement, close on eight o’clock, and too 
late to dream of turning back, even if I could have per- 
suaded myself to face again the experience of the last 
half-hour. Yet whatever curiosity might say for itself, 
I felt a peculiar disinclination to forge ahead. The bait 
had ceased to be enticing. 

“T paused once more under the dismal funnel of green- 
ery in which I found myself staring at the face of my 
watch, and then had another look at the map. A min- 
ute or two’s scrutiny assured me that straight ahead was 
my only possible course. And why not? There was 
company ahead. In this damp soil the impressions of 
the hob-nailed shoes showed more clearly. Quite recently 
those shoes must have come and gone along this path 
on three separate occasions at least. Mine had been a 
rather acutely solitary excursion, and yet for the life of 

19 


Mr. Kempe 


me I had not the smallest desire to meet the maker of 
those footprints. 

“In less than half-an-hour, however, I came to a stand- 
still beneath ‘the old, ancient building, like’ that had once 
been marked on my map. And an uncompanionable sight 
it was. Its walls lay a little back from the green track 
in what appeared to be a natural clearing, or amphitheatre, 
though at a few yards distance huge pines, in shallow ris- 
ing semi-circles, hemmed it in. In shape it was all but 
circular; and must once no doubt have been a wayside 
hermitage or cell. It was of stone and was surmounted 
by a conical roof of thick and heavy slabs, at the south 
side of which rose a minute bell-cote, and towards the 
east a stunted stone cross, with one of its arms broken 
away. 

“The round arched door—its chevron edging all but 
defaced—refused to open. Nothing was to be seen in 
the gloom beyond its gaping keyhole. There was but 
one narrow slit of window, and this was beyond my 
reach. I could not even guess the age of this forbidding 
yet beautiful thing, and the gentleman—as I found after- 
wards—who had compiled the local guide-book had 
omitted to mention it altogether. Here and there in its 
fabric had begun to show itself, but clumsy efforts had 
been made at repair. 

“In that deep dark verdurous silence, unbroken even 
by drone or twitter, the effect of those walls in their 
cold minute simplicity was peculiarly impressive. They 
seemed to strike a solemn chill into the air around them 
—those rain-stained senseless stones. And what looked 
like a kind of derelict burial-ground to the south side of 
20 ; 


Mr. Kempe 


it only intensified its sinister aspect. No place surely for 
when the slow dark hours begin. 

“The graves were very few in number, and only one 
name was decipherable on any of the uncouth and half- 
buried headstones. Two were mere mounds in the 
nibbled turf. I had drawn back to survey once more 
from this new aspect the walls beyond, when—from one 
instant to the next, so to speak—lI became aware of the 
presence of Mr. Kempe. He was standing a few paces 
distant, his gaze in my direction—as unexpected an ap- 
parition as that of Banquo in Macbeth. Not even a 
robin could have appeared with less disturbance of its 
surroundings. Not a twig had snapped, not a leaf had 
rustled. 

“He looked to be a man of about sixty or more, in his 
old greenish-black half-clerical garb, his trousers lapping 
concertina-like over immense ungainly boots. An an- 
tiquated black straw hat was on his head. From _ be- 
neath it gray hair flowed out a little on either side the 
long colourless face with its straggling beard. His eyes 
were clear as water—the lids unusually wide apart—and 
they had the peculiarity, perceptible even at this distance, 
of not appearing to focus what their attention was fixed 
upon. That attention was fixed upon me as a matter of 
fact, and, standing as I was, with head turned in his 
direction, we so remained, closely regarding one another 
for what seemed to be a matter of hours rather than of 
moments. 

“It was I who broke the silence with some affectedly- 
casual remark about the weather and the interestingness 
of the relic that stood, something like a huge mushroom 

21 


Mr. Kempe 


of stone, near-by. The voice that sounded in answer was 
even more astonishing than Mr. Kempe himself. It 
seemed to proceed from a throat rusty from want of use, 
and carried a kind of vibrant glassy note in it, like the 
clash of fine glass slightly cracked. At first I could not 
understand what he said. The sound of it reminds me 
now of Alexander Selkirk when his rescuers found him 
in Juan Fernandez. They said he spoke his words by 
halves, you'll remember. So did Mr. Kempe. They 
sounded like relics of a tongue as ancient as the unknown 
hermit’s chapel beside which we had met. 

“Still, I was myself as nervous as a cat. With all his 
oddities—those wide, colourless eyes, those gestures, that 
over-loud voice, there was nothing hostile, nothing even 
discourteous in his manner, and he did not appear to be 
warning me off as a trespasser. Indeed the finger wag- 
ging at me in the air was clearly beckoning me on. Not 
that I had any keen inclination to follow. I preferred to 
go on watching him, and attempted to mark time by once 
more referring to the age and architecture of the chapel 
—asked him at last pointblank if it were now ‘too late to 
beg the courtesy of a glance inside. 

“The evening light momentarily brightened above the 
dark spreading tops of the pines and struck down full on 
this queer shape with its engrossed yet vacant face. His 
eyes never faltered, their pin-prick pupils fixed in their 
almost hueless irises. Reflected thus, I seemed to be an 
object of an extremely limited significance—a mere speck 
floating in their intense inane. The eyes of the larger 
cats and the hawk-tribe have a similar effect; and yet one 
could hardly assert that their prey has no significance for 
them! 

22 


Mr. Kempe 


“He made no attempt to answer my questions, but ap- 
peared to be enquiring, in turn, how I had contrived to 
invade his solitude; what I wanted, in short. I was con- 
vinced none the less that he was deceiving me. He 
knew well how I had come: for, of course, meeting as we 
had, only one way had been possible—that from the sea. 

“It might be impolitic to press the matter. I merely 
suggested that my journey had not been ‘roses all the 
way, that I must get back to the world above before 
nightfall; and once more gave him to understand my 
innocent purpose—the desire to examine this curious 
relic. His gaze wandered off to the stone hermitage, re- 
turned, and then as if in stealth, rested an instant in- 
tently on my hands. Otherwise he remained perfectly 
motionless: his long knotted fingers hanging down out 
of the sleeves of a jacket too short for his gaunt body 
and those ineffable clumsy rusty boots. 

“The air in this green niche of the bay was stagnant 
with the scent of foliage and flowers; and so magically 
dark and clear it was as though you were in the presence 
of a dream. Or of a dreamer indeed—responsible not 
only for its beauty, but also for its menacing influence on 
the mind. All this, however, only convinced me the more 
of the necessity to keep my attention steadily fixed on the 
figure beside me. There was a something, an aura, about 
him difficult to describe. It was as if he himself were a 
long way off from his body—though that’s pure non- 
sense, of course. As the phrase goes—he was not all 
there. Once more his eyes met mine, and the next thing 
that occurred to me was that I had never seen a human 
countenance that betrayed so desperate a hunger. But 
for what? It was impossible to tell. 


23 


Mr. Kempe 


“He was pressing me to follow him. I caught the word 
‘key’; and he at once led the way. With a prolonged re- 
luctant look behind me—that antiquated cell of stone; 
those gigantic pines; the few sinking mounds clad in their 
fresh green turf—I turned in my tracks; and the glance 
he cast at me over his shoulder was intended, I gathered, 
as a smile of encouragement. 

“The straggling gabled house to which he conducted 
me, with its low tower and smokeless chimneys now 
touched with the last cold red of sunset, was almost more 
windows than wall. The dark glass of their casements 
showed like water in its discoloured sides. Beyond it 
the ravine ascended ever more narrowly, and the house 
rested here in this green gap like a mummy long since 
deserted by its ghost. 

“We crossed a cobbled courtyard, and Mr. Kempe pre- 
ceded me up a wooden flight of stairs into a low-ceiled 
room with one all but ivy-blinded window, and, oddly 
enough, a stone floor. Except for the space where hung 
the faded portrait of what appeared to be a youngish 
woman, her hair dressed in ringlets, bookshelves covered 
the walls. Books lay hugger-mugger everywhere, in- 
deed: on the table, on the chairs, on the floor, and even 
piled into the chimney of the rusty grate. The place was 
fusty with their leather bindings, and with damp. 

“They had evidently been both well-used and neglected. 
There was little opportunity to get the general range of 
their titles—though a complete row of them I noticed 
were in Latin—because some vague intuition compelled 
me to keep my attention fixed upon my host. He had 
motioned me to a chair, and had seated himself on an- 
other that was already topped with two or three folios. 


24 


Mr. Kempe 


It must have been even at midday a gloomy room; and 
owing to its situation it was a dark house. The door 
having admitted us, stood open; beyond it yawned the 
silent staircase.” 

At this the schoolmaster paused; the landlady of the 
Blue Boar had once more emerged, and, like one man, 
we shametacedly pushed our three glasses across the 
counter. 

“And what happened then?” I enquired. 

At this the man in leggings slightly turned his tortoise- 
like head in my direction, as if its usual resort was beneath 
a shell. 

The schoolmaster watched the shape of the landlady 
till it had vanished into the dusk beyond. “Mr. Kempe 
began talking to me,” he said. “Rapidly and almost in- 
coherently at first, but gradually slowing down till I could 
understand more or less what he was saying. He was ex- 
plaining, a little unnecessarily as I fancied, that he was 
a recluse; that the chapel was not intended for public — 
worship; that he had few visitors; that he was a scholar 
and therefore was in need of little company but his books. 
He swept his long arm towards these companions of his 
leisure. The little light that silted through the window 
struck down across his tousled head, just touching his 
brow and cheekbones as he talked. And then in the midst 
of this harangue he suddenly came to an end, and asked 
me if I had been sent there. I assured him that I had 
come of my own free will, and would he oblige me be- 
~ fore we returned to the chapel, with a glass of water. 
He hesitated. 

“ ‘Water?’ he repeated. ‘Oh, water? And then with 
a peculiar gesture he crossed the room and shut the 


25 


| Mr. Kempe 


door after him. His boots beat as hollowly on the stairs 
as sticks on a tom-tom. I heard the creaking of a pump- 
handle, and in a moment he reappeared carrying a blue- 
lined cup without a handle. With a glance at the portrait 
over my head, I drank its ice-cold contents at a gulp, and 
pushed the cup in between two dogs-eared books. 

““T want to get back to the road up above,’ I explained. 

“This seemed to reassure him. He shut his mouth and 
sat gazing atme. ‘Ah! The road up above!’ 

“Then, ‘Why?’ he suddenly almost bawled at me, as if 
I were sitting a long way off. His great hands were 
clasped on his angled knees, his body bolt upright. 

“Why what? | 

““Why have you come here? What is there to spy 
out? This is private property. What do you do—for 
a living? What’s the use of it all? 

“It was an unusual catechism—from stranger to 
stranger. But I had just escaped an unpleasant death, 
and could afford to be indulgent. Besides, he was 
years and years older than I. I told him that I was 
a schoolmaster, on vacation, not thinking it necessary to 
add that owing to a small legacy I was out of a job at 
the time. JI said I was merely enjoying myself. 

““Enjoying yourself! And you teach!’ he cried with 
a snap of his jaw. ‘And what do you teach? Silly, 
suffocating lies, I suppose; or facts, as you prefer to call 
them.’ He drew his hand down his long colourless face, 
and I stole a glance towards the door. ‘If human beings 
are mere machines, well and good,’ he went on. ‘But 
supposing, my young friend, they are not mere machines ? 
Supposing they have souls in their bodies; what then? 
26 


Mr. Kempe 


Supposing you have a soul in your body: what then? 
Ay, and the proof; the proof!” 

The schoolmaster’s face puckered up once more into 
a genial smile. 

“I won’t attempt,’ he went on, “to repeat word for 
word the talk I had that evening. I can give only the 
gist of it. But I had stumbled pretty abruptly, you'll 
notice, on Mr. Kempe’s King Charles’s head. And he 
presented me with it on a charger. He was possessed, I 
gathered, by one single aim, thought and desire. All 
these years of his ‘retirement’ had apparently been spent 
in this one quest to prove Man’s possession of ‘Soul.’ 
Certain doubts in my mind sprang up a little later in the 
evening, but it was clear from the beginning that in pur- 
suit of this he had spared neither himself nor the wife 
that was gone. It was no less clear that he was entirely 
incapable of what better brains, no doubt, would have con- 
sidered a scientific treatment of his theme. 

“He thrust into my hand a few chapters of a foolscap 
manuscript that lay on the table—a fly-blown mirky pile 
of paper at least eighteen inches high. Never have I seen 
anything to which the term ‘reading-maiter’ seemed more 
appropriate. The ink was faded on the top page; it was 
stained as if with tea. This work was entitled briefly, 
‘The Soul’—though the sub-title that followed it would 
not have disgraced the author of the ‘Anatomy.’ 

“I could follow no more than a line or two at a time 
of the crazy hand-writing. The pages were heavily in- 
terscored, annotated and revised, not only in pencil but 
in violet and in red ink. A good part of it appeared to 
be in Latin and Hebrew, and other inactive tongues. 


27 


Mr. Kempe 


But turning them over at haphazard I caught such page- 
headings as ‘Contemplation’; ‘Dreams’; ‘Flagellation’; 
‘Cadaver’; ‘Infancy.’ I replaced the sheets a little 
gingerly on the table; though one mustn't, of course, 
judge, of the merits of a work by the appearance of it 
in MS. 

“The desolation of its author’s looks and his abrupt- 
ness of manner thinned away awhile as he warmed to his 
subject. But it was not so much his own sufferings in 
the cause as the thought of what Mrs. Kempe’s last few 
years on earth must have been to her, that made me an 
attentive listener. Hers must indeed have proved a 
lingering death. He had never left her side, I gathered, 
for weeks at a time, except to tend his patch of garden, 
and to prepare their niggardly meals. And as her body 
had wasted, poor soul, his daily inquisition, his daily 
probings had become ever more urgent and desperate. 

“There was no doubt in the world that this afflicted 
old man had loved his wife. The softening of the vacant 
inhuman eyes as he told me of that last deathbed colloquy 
was enough to prove that. Maybe it was in part be- 
cause of this affection that mere speculation had sharp- 
ened into what they call an idée fixe. Still, I hardly think 
so. More probably the insidious germ had shared his 
cradle. And after all, some degree of conviction on the 
subject is not out of place in men of his cloth. He had 
abandoned his calling indeed, he was assuring me, solely 
as a proof of his zeal! 

“He showed me also one or two late photographs of 
Mrs. Kempe—taken with his own antiquated camera, and 
‘developed’ maybe in this very room. Soul indeed! 
There was little else. The face mirkily represented in 
28 


Mr. Kempe 


them wore a peculiar remote smile. The eyes had been 
hollowly directed towards the round leather cap of the 
machine. And so fallen were the features, now fading 
away on the discoloured paper, they might as well have 
been the presentment of a ghost. 

“What precise proofs he had actually demanded of this 
companion of his hermitage I cannot even guess. And 
what proofs might he still be pleading for, pursuing? 
Evidently none as yet had satisfied his craving. But it 
was at least to his credit that his own personal experiments 
—experiments on himself, I mean—had been as drastic. 
In one of them I had unwittingly shared. For the cliff 
path, I discovered, had long been his constant penance. 
A catlike foot was concealed beneath those Brobdingnagian 
boots. His had been the hand that had not only helped 
Nature protect her fastnesses, but had kept off all but 
one or two occasional stragglers as fatuous as myself. 

“Tt had been his haunt, this path—day and night. He 
questioned the idle heavens there. In the face of a peril 
so extreme the spirit wins almost to the point of severance 
from its earthly clay. Night and a half-moon and the 
northern constellations—I could at least in fancy share his 
vigils there. Only an occasional ship ventures into sight 
of that coast, but almost any day, it seemed, during these 
_last few years a good spy-glass might have discerned 
from its decks a human shape facing the Infinite from that 
appalling eyrie. 

“Both delusions and illusions, too, are rapid breeders. 
Which of the two, I wondered—still wonder—was this 
old man’s conviction—the conviction, I mean, that one is 
likely to be more acutely conscious of the spirit within 
when the body is suspended, as it were, from the lintel of 

29 


Mr. Kempe 


death’s door. What dreams may come in such circum- 
stances every true-blue psychologist no doubt would 
merely pooh-pooh. Still, after all, Mr. Kempe had been 
something of a pioneer in this inquest. He had not 
spared himself. He could not live by faith, it seemed. 
“He must indeed again and again have come uncommonly 
near dying in the pursuit of it. 

“He had fasted moreover, and was now little more 
than a mere frame of bones within his outlandish clothes. 
Those boots of his—they kept forcing themselves on my 
attention—a worse fit than any worn by some homesick 
desperate soldier clambering ‘over the top’ in the Great 
War. They stuck in my mind. 

“You don’t seem to realise—you folk out there don’t 
seem to realise’ he suddenly began shouting at me, ‘that 
nothing in this world is of the slightest importance com- 
pared with a Yes or No to what I ask. If we are noth- 
ing more than the brutes that perish—and no sign ever 
comes from them, I may tell you—then let us perish, I 
say. Let fire descend from Heaven and shrivel us up. 
I care not in what cataclysm of horror. I have passed 
them all. I am suggesting no blasphemy. I make no 
challenge; no denial—merely a humble plodder, my 
dear sir. But no! Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Not 
a word.’ He lifted himself out of his chair, opened the 
door, looked out and came back again. 

“I disapprove’—he brandished his outspread fingers 
at me—‘I disapprove absolutely of peering and prying. 
Your vile pernicious interferences with the natural mys- 
teries which we as humanity inherited from the old Adam 
—away with them! I declare I am a visitor here. I 


30 


Mr. Kempe 


declare that this——he swept his hand down his meagre 
carcase,—‘this is my mere tenancy. All that I seek in 
the simplest proof. <A proof, that would not so much as 
stay a pulse-beat in the vile sceptics that give their 
wretched lives to what they call Science. 

“*T am not even a philosopher,’ he ejaculated. ‘I am 
here alone, a wayfaring man and a fool. Alone—in the 
face of this one supreme mystery. And I need aid!’ 
His voice ceased; he threw out his hands and sat there 
emptily gazing at me. 

“And so he continued. Now he would lift himself out 
of his chair and prowling from shelf to shelf, scanning at 
but an inch or two distant the titles of their contents, would 
thrust volume after volume into my hands for evidence, 
accompanying his clumsy motions with peevish and 
broken comments impossible to follow. I was presently 
surrounded with these things as with a surf. 

“Then he would once more seat himself, and embark on 
a protracted harangue with that cracked disused voice 
rising steadily until it broke in a discordant screech of 
argument. 

“Almighty God,’ he yelled at me, ‘you sit there, living, 
breathing, a human being; and the one justification of 
this hideous masquerade left uncertain.’ He flung his 
hand into the air. ‘What right has he even to share the 
earth with me!’ he shouted into the quiet. 

Then once more there followed as swift a return to 
silence, to self-possession—that intent devouring stare. 
One at least knows oneself to be something objective in 
any chance-encountered pair of human eyes. In his, as 
I have said already, I appeared to have no material exis- 

ny 


Mr. Kempe 


tence whatsoever. Mr. Kempe might have been survey- 
ing, talking to his own shadow. It was peculiarly dis- 
concerting. 

“After yet another such outburst he had for a moment 
lain back in his chair as if exhausted. And I was so in- 
tent in my scrutiny of him that a second or two went by 
before I sprang forward to pick up the few dingy photo- 
graphs that had fallen out of his hand on to the grimy 
patch of carpet beneath. But he himself had stooped 
even more abruptly, and our skulls collided together with 
a crack that for the moment all but dazed me. 

“But the eye moves almost as swiftly as the mind, and 
the collision had not been hasty enough to prevent my 
snatching a glimpse of one or two of them, photographs 
of which neither this widower nor his wife had been the 
original. I drew back appalled—their details fixed in my 
mind as if etched there by a flash of lightning. And, 
leaving him to gather up his further evidences as best he 
could, I instantly found myself edging towards the 
door. Those squalid oblongs of cardboard were easily 
concealed in his immense palm. He pawed them to- 
gether as clumsily as a bear might combs of honey; 
then slowly raised his gray dishevelled head, and met my 
eyes. 

“T paused. ‘You have had other visitors at times? I 
queried as mildly as my tongue would allow. 

“ “What visitors, young man, do you mean, may I ask? 
An extraordinary change had come into his voice—a flat- 
ness, an obsequiousness. The ingratiating tones were 
muffled, as if he could hardly trust himself to speak. 
For a while I could only gape in reply. 

“Tike myself,’ I blurted out at last. ‘Visitors who 


32 


Mr. Kempe 


come to—well, out of sheer curiosity. There’s the other 
route, I suppose?’ 

“My one desire just then was to keep my thoughts 
about Mr. Kempe rational and within bounds. To make 
a monster of him would be merely to lose my head once 
more as I had already lost it on that afternoon’s journey. 
None the less I was now looking at him through the after- 
image of those chance-seen photographs. They were a 
disturbing medium. The body of a human being who 
has fallen from a great height is not pleasing and pacify- 
ing to look at even though for a while its owner may have 
survived the fatality. There were others, too; and yet, it 
was less his photographs than the amateur photographer 
that had set my teeth on edge. He looked so old and so 
helpless—like an animal, as I say, enslaved by—and yet 
incapable of obeying—some heaven-sent instinct. That 
terrifying, doglike despair! 

“But then, open your newspaper any fine morning of 
your life, and which is the more likely to greet you on the 
news-page: the innocent young lady in the pink gauze 
petticoats over there, or that old figure of fun in the 
monk’s cowl?” 

The tortoiselike shape of the man in leggings once 
more stirred on its stool. But this time his little eyes 
were turned in my direction. 

“How did you manage to get out at last?’ I enquired 
of the schoolmaster. 

“Well,” he said, “all this time Mr. Kempe had been 
watching me as circumspectly as I had been watching 
him, but as if, too, he were uncertain how many paces 
distant from him I stood. Then once more voice and 
manner changed. He feigned to be reassured. ‘It has 


33 


Mr. Kempe 


been a wonderful day,’ he remarked, with the dignity of 
an old retired scholar whose dubious fortune it has been 
to entertain a foreign prince; ‘a wonderful day. And 
my only regret is that I was unprepared for the occasion ; 
that I have so poor a hospitality to offer. You may have 
had an exceedingly painful experience this afternoon. 
Why, my dear sir, in the absence of mind that comes over 
me once I embark on this hobby of mine, I haven’t even 
asked you to wash your hands.’ 

“Almost involuntarily I glanced down at them. Like 
Macbeth’s they needed the invitation. But I must con- 
fess I preferred this old minister when he was not talk- 
ing to me as if I were an imbecile child in a Sunday 
School. Besides, I knew perfectly well that—whether 
from that tumbling watch-tower of his, or from some 
hiding-place in the woods—there had been one intent wit- 
ness of that experience. I thrust my hands into my 
pockets out of his sight. 

““Tf you will await me here a moment,’ he went on 
—and his utterance began to thicken again, ‘I will get the 
key to the chapel—a remarkable, even unique example of 
its order. There was a well, too, in former times, and 
even archeologists have failed to agree about its date. 
They used to come; they used to come: and would argue, 
too. Why I can prove it is in parts at least not later than 
the ninth century. And the interior .. . but, dear me, 
it will soon be dark ; and—no—you mustn’t think of leav- 
ing the house to-night. I need company; I need it.’ He 
poked forward at me again, while yet furtively and 
rapidly edging towards the door. 

“With a peculiar disinclination to come into the very 
slightest contact with his person, I had to dodge out of 


34 


Mr. Kempe 


his way to allow him to pass, and attempted to do so 
without appearing to show like a visitor who has strayed 
by mischance into the cage of a dangerous animal in some 
zoological garden. The old gray tousled head turned 
not an inch upon its heavy angular shoulders as he passed 
me; but in the dimming light of the window I caught a 
glimpse of the wide sea-like eyes intently fixed on me— 
like lifeless planets in the waste of space. 

“Even a young man may have intimations of the fool 
he is about to prove himself. Intimations, I mean, that 
come too late. Before the cumbrous door had closed be- 
hind him, I was listening for the sound of the key being 
turned in the lock. I didn’t even wait to try the handle, 
but tiptoed as rapidly as possible over the heaped-up books 
on the floor towards the window. It was one of dingy 
oblong panes, and the hasp was broken. The drop be- 
neath its sill—to any one at least who had reached the 
house by the less easy way of the two roads—was almost 
as easy as getting into bed. It would land me some ten 
feet below on a heap of vegetable rubbish. But the 
hinges of the window had been allowed to rust, and the 
wood to shrink and swell with the changing seasons. 

“Not a sound had followed the locking of the door, and 
unless Mr. Kempe had disencumbered his feet of their 
boots, he was at that moment collecting his wits im- 
mediately outside of it. I tiptoed across once more. 
‘Please don’t let me be any trouble,’ I bawled. ‘I could 
come again another time.’ 

“The next instant I was back at the window, listening. 
The answer boomed down at me at last from some room 
above. But I could distinguish no words—merely a 
senseless babble. It would be indiscreet, it seemed, to 

35 


Mr. Kempe 


hesitate any longer. I seized a frowsy cushion and with 
all my force thrust it against the rotten frame of the win- 
dow. It flew open with but one explosive crack. I was 
prepared for it. Once more I paused. Then after a last 
hasty glance round that dismal laboratory, its scattered 
books, fusty papers, blackened ceiling, broken lamp— 
and that one half-obliterated portrait of the gentle 
apologetic faded young woman on the wall, I clambered 
soundlessly on to the sill, and dropped. The refuse be- 
low was thoroughly rotten; not a twig snapped. 

“The moment I touched ground I regretted this ig- 
nominious exit. There was I, a young man—thirty to 
forty years at least the junior of Mr. Kempe—a young 
man who, whether or not possessed of a soul, was at least 
fairly capable in body. Surely I might have ventured—! 
life has more riddles than one. But I did not pursue 
these thoughts far. The very look and appearance of 
the house as I glanced up at the window out of which I 
had descended so abruptly, its overhanging gable, its pie- 
bald darkened walls rising towards the first stars under 
the last of twilight—it was hardly less unhappy and un- 
pleasing company than its tenant. 

“I groped my way beyond its purlieus as quickly and 
silently as I could, mounted a low wall and was already 
in the woods. By luck I had caught a glimpse of the 
Plough straddling above the chimneys, so I knew my 
North, and edged off upwards and westwards for some 
little distance under the motionless trees before I came 
to a halt. 

“The house was now out of sight, its owner once more 
abandoned to his own resources and researches. And I 
was conscious of no particular desire to return to examine 


36 


Mr. Kempe 


the interior of the small stone chapel, nor the inscriptions 
on the few headstones which memorialised those who had 
been longest slumbering in the ground near-by. 

“Possibly I was not the only visitor who had bidden 
the recluse in this valley so unmannerly a farewell. I 
cannot at any rate imagine anyone simpleton enough to 
venture back even in response to the sound of hysterical 
weeping that came edging across the silence of the woods.” 

“D’ye meatt that old man was crying?” queried our 
friend in leggings. 

The drizzle in the lane outside the Inn had plucked 
up courage as daylight ebbed, and had increased to a 
steady downpour. He had to repeat his question. 

“I mean,” said the schoolmaster a little acidly, “ex- 
actly what I say. I am nothing much of a traveller, or 
perhaps I could tell you what resemblance the noise of it 
had to the cajolings of a crocodile.” | 

“My God!” coughed the other derisively. With this he 
seemed to have finally made up his mind, and lurched 
heavily off his stool. And without even so much as a 
“good-night” to our landlady, he betook himself out of 
the bar. 

Except for the noise of the rain a complete silence fol- 
lowed his departure. 

“And you never went back?’ I ventured presently. 
“Or—or spoke about the matter ?” 

“T mean, do you see,” said the schoolmaster, “I acted 
like a fool. I should have taken Mr. Kempe simply on 
his face value. There was nothing to complain about. 
He hadn’t invited me to come and see him. And it was 
hardly his fault, I suppose, if an occasional visitor failed 
to complete so precarious a journey. I wouldn’t go so far 


37 


Mr. Kempe 


as that. He was merely one of those would-be benefac- 
tors to the human race who go astray; get lost, ramble on 
down the wrong turning. Qua pioneer, I ask,” he rapped 
his fingers on the pewter of the counter, “was he ex- 
ceptional?” He was arguing with himself, not with me. 

I nodded. “But what was your impression—was he 
sure—Mr. Kempe? Either way?” 

“The Soul?” 

“Ves,” I echoed, “the Soul.” 

But I repeated the word under my breath, for some- 
thing in the sound of our voices seemed to have attracted 
the attention of the landlady. And, alas, she had decided 
to light up. 

The solemnity of Man’s remotest ancestors lay over 
the schoolmaster’s features. “I can’t say,’ he replied. 
“I am not certain even if he was aware how densely 
populated his valley appeared to be—to a chance visitor, 
I mean. What’s more, to judge from the tones of his 
voice, he had scarcely the effect of a single personality. 
There were at least three Mr. Kempes present that eve- 
ning. And I haven’t the faintest wish in the world to 
meet any one of them again.” 

“And afterwards? Was it comparatively easy find- 
ing your way—on to the new cliff road?” 

“Comparatively,” said the schoolmaster. “Though it 
took time. But nights are fairly short in May, even in 
country as thickly wooded as that.” 

I continued to look at him without speaking; yet an- 
other unuttered question on my lips. 

To judge from the remote friendly smile he just 
blinked at me, he appeared to have divined it, though it 
produced no direct answer. He got down from his stool, 
38 


Mr. Kempe 


looked at his empty glass—and for the first time I no- 
ticed he was wearing mittens over his small bluish hands. 
“It’s getting late,” he said, with an eye fixed vacantly 
once more on the automatic machine in the corner of the 
tap-room. There was no denying it; nor that even the 
musty interior of the Blue Boar looked more hospitable 
than the torrential darkness of the night outside. 

How strange is man. The spectacle depressed me be- 
yond words—as if it had any more significance than that 
for its passing hour a dense yet not unbeneficent cloud was 
spread betwixt this earth and ours and the faithful shin- 
ing of the stars. 

But I did not mention this to the schoolmaster. He 
seemed to be lost in a dark melancholy, his face a maze 
of wrinkles. But beyond him—is a cracked looking-glass 
—I could see his double sitting there upon its stool. I 
was conscious that in some way I had bitterly disappointed 
him. I looked at him—my hand on the door-handle— 
waiting to go out. ... 


37 


Missing 


Ie. T was the last day of a torrid week in 

ww Qi London—the flaming crest of what the 
newspapers called a heat wave. The ex- 
hausted inmates of the dazzling, airless 
streets—plateglass, white stone, bur- 
nished asphalt, incessant roar din, fume 
and odours—have the appearance at such times of insects 
trapped in an oven of a myriad labyrinthine windings and 
chambers: a glowing brazen maze to torture Christians in. 
To have a mind even remotely resembling it must be 
Satan’s sole privilege! 

I had been shopping; or rather, I had been loafing 
about from one department on to another in one of the 
huge “stores” in search of bathing-drawers, a preventa- 
tive of insect bites, and a holiday “shocker,” and had 
retired at last incapable of buying anything—even in a 
world where pretty well everything except peace of mind 
can be bought, and sold. The experience had been op- 
pressive and trying to the temper. 

Too hot, too irritable even to lunch, I had drifted into 
a side street, and then into a second-hand bookshop that 
happened still to be open this idle Saturday afternoon ; 
and having for ninepence acquired a copy of a book on 
psychoanalysis which I didn’t want and should never 
read, I took refuge in a tea shop. 

40 





Missing 

In spite of the hot-water-fountain on the counter it 
was a degree or two cooler in here, though even the 
marble-top tables were tepid to the touch. Quiet and 
drowsy, too. A block of ice surmounted the dinner 
wagon by the counter. The white clock face said a 
quarter to three. Few chairs were now occupied; the 
midday mellay was over. A heavy slumbrousness muf- 
fled the place—the flies were as idle as the waitresses, 
and the waitresses were as idle as the flies. 

I gave my order, and sat back exhausted in a listless 
vacancy of mind and body. And my dazed eyes having 
like the flies little of particular interest to settle on, settled 
on the only fellow reveller that happened to be sitting 
within easy reach. At first glimpse there could hardly 
be a human being you would suppose less likely to attract 
attention. He was so scrupulously respectable, so en- 
tirely innocent of “atmosphere.” Even a Chelsea psychic 
would have been compelled to acknowledge that this par- 
ticular human being had either disposed of his aura or 
had left it at home. And yet my first glimpses of him 
had drawn me out of the vacuum into which I had sunk 
as easily as a cork is drawn out of an empty bottle. 

He was sitting at a table to the left, and a little in 
front of me. The glare from the open door and the 
gentler light from the cream-blinded shop window picked 
out his every hair and button. It flooded in on him from 
the sparkling glittering street, focussed him, “placed” 
him, arranged him—as if for a portrait in the finest of 
oils for next year’s “Academy.” Limelight on the actor 
manager traversing the blasted heath is mere child’s play 
by comparison. 

Obviously he was not “the complete Londoner’— 

4I 


Missing 

though that can hardly be said to be a misfortune. On 
the other hand, there was nothing rural, and only a 
touch or so of the provincial in his appearance. He wore 
a neat—an excessively neat—pepper-and-salt tweed suit, 
the waistcoat cut high and exhibiting the points of a 
butterfly collar and a triangle of black silk cravat slipped 
through a gold mourning ring. His ears maybe were a 
little out of the mode. They had been attached rather 
high and flat on either side of his conical head with its 
dark, glossy, silver-speckled hair. 

The nose was straight, the nostrils full. They sug- 
gested courage of a kind; possibly, even, on occasion, 
bravado. He looked the kind of man, I mean, it is well 
to keep out of a corner. But the eyes that were now 
peering vacantly down that longish nose over a trim but 
unendearing moustache at the crumbs on his empty plate 
were too close together. So, at least, it seemed to me. 
But then I am an admirer of the wide expressive brow 
—such as our politicians and financiers display. Those 
eyes at any rate gave this spruce and respectable person 
just a hint, a soupcon of the fox. I have never heard 
though that the fox is a dangerous animal even in a 
corner ; only that he has his wits about him and preys on 
geese—whereas my stranger in the tea shop had been 
refreshing himself with Osborne biscuits. 

It was hot. The air had grown more stagnant. And 
heat—unless in Oriental regions—is not conducive to ex- 
quisite manners; far otherwise. I continued to watch 
this person, indolently speculating whether his little par- 
ticularities of appearance did not match, or matched too 
precisely. Those ears and that cravat, for example; or 
those spruce-moustached nostrils and the glitter of the 


42 


Missing 
close-neighbouring eyes. And why had he brought to 
mind a tightly-packed box with no address on it? He 
began to be a burden, yet I could not keep my eyes away 
from him—nor from his hands. They were powerful 
and hairy, with large knuckles; and now that they were 
not in use he had placed them on his knees under the 
dark polished slab of his marble table. Beneath those 
knees rested his feet (the toes turned in a little) in highly- 
polished boots, with thickish soles and white socks. 

There is, I agree, something peculiarly vulgar in thus 
picking a fellow-creature to pieces. But then Keats so 
dissected Miss Brawne even when he was in love with 
her, and it was certainly not love at first sight between 
myself and this stranger. 

Whether he knew it or not, he was attaching himself 
to me; he was making his influence felt. It was odd, 
then, that he could remain so long unconscious of so de- 
tached a scrutiny. Maybe that particular nerve in him 
had become atrophied. He looked as if a few other 
tather important nerves might be atrophied. When he 
did glance up at me—the waitress having appeared with 
my tea at the same moment—there was a far-away 
startled look in his bleak blue-black eyes—as if he had 
been called back. 

Nothing more; and even at that it was much such 
a look as had been for some little time fixed on the dry 
biscuit crumbs in his empty plate. He seemed indeed to 
be a man accustomed to being startled or surprised into 
vigilance without reason. But having seen me looking at 
him, he did not hesitate. He carefully took up his hat, 
his horn-handled and gold-mounted umbrella, and a large 
rusty scaling leather bag that lay on a chair beside him; 

43 


Missing 

rose; and stepping gently over with an almost catlike 
precision, seated himself in the chair opposite to mine. 
I continued to pour out my tea. 

“You will excuse me troubling you,” he began in a 
voice that suggested he could sing tenor though he spoke 
bass, “but would you kindly tell me the number of the 
omnibus that goes from here to King’s Cross? I am a 
stranger to this part of London.” 

I called after the waitress: “What is the number of 
the ’bus,” I said, “that goes from here to King’s Cross?” 

“The number of the "bus, you si, that goes from here 
to King’s Cross?” 

“Yes,” I said, “to King’s Cross.” 

“T’m sure I don’t know,” she said. “I'll ask the 
counter.” And she tripped off in her silk stockings and 
patent leather shoes. 

“The counter will know,’ I assured him. He looked 
at me, moving his lips over his teeth as if either or both 
for some reason had cause to be uneasy. 

“I am something of a stranger to London altogether,” 
he said, “and I don’t usually come these ways: it’s a 
novelty to me. The omnibuses are very convenient.” 

“Don’t you? Is it?’ I replied. “Why not?’ They 
were rather point-blank questions (and a gentleman, said 
Dr. Johnson, does not ask questions) but somehow they 
had slipped out as if at his pressing invitation. 

He looked at me, his eyes seeming to draw together 
into an intenser focus. He was not exactly squinting, 
but I have noticed a similar effect in the eyes of a dog 
when its master is about to cry “Fetch it!” 

“You. see,” he said, “I live in the country, and only 
come to London when I seem to need company—badly, 


44 


Missing 
I mean. There’s a great contrast between the country 
and this. All these houses. So many strange faces. It 
takes one out of oneself.” 

I glanced round at the sparsely occupied tables. A 
cloud apparently had overlaid the sun, for a faint cop- 
pery glow was now reflected from the drowsy street. I 
could even hear the white-faced clock ticking. To con- 
gratulate him on his last remark would hardly have been 
courteous after so harmless an advance. I merely looked 
at him. What kind of self, I was vaguely speculating, 
would return into his hospitality when he regained his 
usual haunts. 

“T have a nice little place down there,” he went on, 
“but there’s not much company. Lonely: especially now. 
Even a few hours makes all the difference. You would 
be surprised how friendly a place London can be; the 
people, I mean: helpful.” 

What can only be described as a faint whinny had 
sounded in his voice as he uttered that “helpful.” Was 
he merely to prove yet another of those unfortunate 
travellers who have lost the return halves of their rail- 
way tickets? Had he marked me down for his prey? 

“It is not so much what they say,” he continued, laying 
his hand on the marble table; “but just, well, their com- 
pany, you know.” I glanced at the heavy ring on its 
third finger and then at his watch chain—woven ap- 
parently of silk or hair—with little gold rings at intervals 
along it to secure the plait. His own gaze continued to 
rest on me with so penetrating, so corkscrew-like an in- 
tensity, that I found myself glancing over my shoulder in 
search of the waitress. She however was now engaged in 
animated argument with the young lady at the pay-desk. 

45 


Missing 

“Do you live far from London?” I ventured. 

“About seventy miles,” he replied with an obvious gulp 
of relief at this impetus to further conversation. “A nice 
old house too considering the rent, roomy enough but 
not too large. Its only drawback in some respects is 
there’s nothing near it—not within call, J mean; and we 
—I—suffer from the want of a plentiful supply of water. 
Especially now.” 

Why so tactless a remark on this broiling afternoon 
should have evoked so vivid a picture of a gaunt yellow- 
brick building perched amid sloping fields parched lint- 
white with a tropical drought, its garden little more than 
a display of vegetable anatomies, I cannot say. It was a 
house of a hideous aspect ; but I confess it stirred my in- 
terest. Whereupon my stranger, apparently, thought he 
could safely glance aside; and I could examine him more 
at leisure. It was not, I have to confess, a taking face. 
There was a curious hollowness in its appearance. He 
looked like the shell of a man, or rather, like a hermit 
crab—that neat pepper-and-salt tweed suit and so on be- 
ing a kind of second-hand accumulation on his back. 

“And of course,” he began again, “now that I am 
alone I become”—he turned sharply back on me—“I be- 
come more conscious of it.” 

“Of the loneliness?” I suggested. 

Vacancy appeared on his face, as if he had for the 
instant stopped thinking. “Yes,” he replied, once more 
transfixing me with those clear close eyes of his, “the 
loneliness. It seems to increase more and more as the 
other slips away into the past. But I suppose we most 
of us have much the same experience; just of that, I 
mean. And even in London.. .” | 


46 


Missing 

I busied myself with my tea things, having no particular 
wish at the moment to continue the conversation. But he 
hadn’t any intention of losing his fish as easily as all that. 

“There’s a case now here in the newspaper this morn- 
ing,’ he went on, his glance wandering off to a copy of 
the Daily Mail that lay on the chair next the one he had 
just vacated. “A man not very much older than I am 
—found dead. Dead. The only occupant of quite a 
good-sized house, I should judge, at Stoke Newington— 
though I don’t know the place personally. Living there 
for years on end without even a charwoman to do for 
him—to—to work for him. Still even there there was 
some kind of company, I suppose. He could look out 
of the window; he could hear people moving about next 
door. Where I am, there isn’t another house in sight, 
not even a barn, and so far as I can see, what they call 
Nature doesn’t become any the more friendly however 
long you stay in a place—the birds and that kind of thing. 
It may get better in time; but it’s only a few months ago 
since I was left quite like this—when my sister died.” 

Obviously I was hooked beyond hope of winning free 
again until this corkscrew persistent creature had had 
his way with me. The only course seemed to be to get 
the experience over as quickly as possible. It is not easy, 
however, to feign an active sympathy, and mention of his 
dead sister had produced in my mind only a faint reflex 
image of a dowdy lady no longer young in dingy black. 
Still, it was an image that proved to be not very far from 
the actuality. 

“Any close companionship like that,’ I murmured, 
“when it is broken is a tragic thing.” 

He appeared to have seen no significance in my re- 


47 


Missing 

mark. “And you see, once there were three of us. Once. 
It never got into the papers—at least not into the London 
papers, except just by mention, I mean.” He moistened 
his lips. “Did you ever happen to come across a report 
about a lady, a Miss Dutton, who was ‘missing’ ?” 

It was a pretty stupid question, for after all, few 
human beings are so gifted as to be able to recall the 
names even of the protagonists in genuine causes célébres. 
To bear in mind every sort of Miss Dutton whose dis- 
appearance would be referred to only in news-snippets 
borrowed by the Metropolitan press from the provincial, 
would be rather too much of a tax even for those in- 
terested in such matters. I sipped my tea and surveyed 
him as sagaciously as possible; “Not that I can actually 
recall,’ I said. “Miss—Dutton? It isn’t a very un- 
common name. You knew her?” 

“Knew her!” he repeated, placing his hands on his 
knees and sitting stiffly back in his chair, his eyes un- 
flinchingly fixed on mine. “She lived with us a matter 
of two years or more. It was us she left. It was my 
house she was missing from. It caused quite a stir in 
the neighbourhood. It was the talk of the countryside. 
There was an Enquiry; and all that.” 

“How long ago?” 

“Pretty near a year ago. Yes; a year yesterday.” 

“Do you mean the enquiry, or when Miss Dutton dis- 
appeared ?” 

“The enquiry,” he replied in a muffled fashion, as if a 
little annoyed at my want of perspicacity. “The other 
was—oh, a month or more before that.” 

' The interview was becoming rather a laborious way of 
extracting a story, but somehow its rudiments had begun 


48 


Missing 
to interest me. I had nothing to do. Judging from the 
look of the street, the quicksilver in the thermometer was 
still edging exquisitely upwards. I detested the thought 
of emerging into that oven. So apparently did my com- 
panion, unless the mere sound of his voice seemed to 
him better entertainment than, say, the nearest “picture 
palace’—where at least one would be out of sight and 
it would be dark. 

“I should have thought,’ I began again in a voice as 
matter-of-fact as I could manage, “that living as you do, a 
stir in the neighbourhood would not much matter, though 
I agree that the mystery itself must have mattered a good 
deal more. It must have been a great shock to you 
both.” 

“Ay,” he said, with a gleam in his eye, “but that’s 
just what you Londoners don’t seem to understand. You 
have your newspapers and all that. But in most ways 
you don’t get talked about much. It’s not so in the 
country. I guarantee you might be living right in the 
middle of the Yorkshire Fells and yet, if it came to there 
being anything to keep their tongues wagging, you'd 
know that your neighbours were talking of you, and what 
about, for miles around. It gets across—like those 
black men’s drums one hears about in West Africa. As 
if the mere shock of the thing wasn’t enough! What I 
feel about it is that nowadays people don’t seem 
to show any sympathy, any ordinary feeling with—with 
those in such circumstances; at least, not country people. 
Wouldn’t you say yourself,” he added, with feline rapidity, 
“that if you were reported as missing it would be rough 
luck if nobody cared?” 

“T don’t quite see what you mean,” I replied. “I 

49 


Missing 
thought you said that the disappearance of your friend 
made a stir in the neighbourhood.” 

“Yes; but they were not thinking so much of her as 
of the cause of it.” 

We exchanged a long glance, but without much ad- 
dition to my own small fund of information. “But 
surely,” I ventured, ‘that must depend upon where she 
was supposed to have disappeared to?” 

“That,” he replied, “they never knew. We couldn't 
find out not one iota about it. You’ve no idea”—he drew 
his hand down over his face as if to clear away a shadow 
from his eyes—“‘you’ve no idea. Since she has gone I 
feel almost sometimes as if she can never have been real. 
There, but not real; if you understand me. I see her; 
and then the real thing goes again. It never occurred to 
me, that.” 

“The psychologists would tell us something about 
that.”’ 

“The what?” he asked sharply. 

“People interested in the working of the mind, you 
know. After all, we can’t definitely say whether that 
teapot there is real—what it is in itself, I mean. And 
merely to judge from its looks,” I added, “one might hope 
it was a pure illusion.” 

He looked hard at the teapot. “Miss Dutton was a 
very well-preserved woman for her age,” he said. “And 
when I say ‘not real,’ it’s only in a manner of speaking, 
I mean. I’ve got her portrait in the newspaper in my 
pocket-book. That ought to prove her real enough. I 
never knew any one who was more ‘all there,’ as they 
say. She was a good friend to me—I have every reason 
to remember her. She came along of her own free 


50 


| Missing 
will—just a chance meeting, in Scarborough, as a matter 
of fact. And she liked the comforts of a home after all 
those hotels and boarding houses.” 

In the course of these ruminating and mournful re- 
marks—and there was unmistakable “feeling” in his tones 
—he was rather privily turning over the contents of an 
old leather pocket-book with an inelastic black band. He 
drew out a frayed newspaper cutting, and put it down on 
the table beside the teapot. 

“Looking at that, you wouldn’t be in much doubt what 
Miss Dutton was in herself, now, would you? You'd 
recognise her,” he raised his eyes, “if she were—if you 
met her, I mean, in these awful streets? I would my- 
self.” 

It was impossible to decide whether this last remark 
was ironical, triumphant, embittered, or matter-of-fact ; 
so I looked at Miss Dutton. She was evidently a blonde 
and a well-preserved woman, as my friend had intimated ; 
stoutish, with a plump face, a plump nose, infantile blue 
eyes, frizzy hair, and she wore (what a few years ago 
were old-fashioned and are now new-fashioned) long 
ear-rings. 

It was curious what a stabilising effect the ear-rings 
produced. They resembled the pole Blondin used to 
carry as he tripped across his rope over the Niagara Falls. 
Miss Dutton was looking out of her blurred image with 
a sort of insouciance, gaiety, “charm,” the charm that 
photographers aim at but rather seldom convey. Des- 
tiny, apparently, casts no retrospective shadow. I defy 
anybody to have found the faintest hint in that aware, 
vain, commonplace, good-natured face which would sug- 
gest Miss Dutton was ever going to be “missed’”—missed, 

51 


Missing 

I mean, in the sense of becoming indiscoverable. In the 
other sense her friends would no doubt miss her a good 
deal. But then boarding-houses and hotels are the re- 
sorts rather of vagrant acquaintances than of friends. 

The owner of the newspaper snippet was scrutinising 
the gay, blurred photograph with as much interest as I 
was; though to him it was upside-down. There was a 
queer fond look on his face, a little feline, perhaps, in 
its sentimentality. 

I pushed back the cutting across the marble table and 
he carefully reinterred it in his pocket-book. “I was 
wondering,” he rambled on as he did so, “what you might 
have thought of it—without prejudice, so to speak, if 
you had come across it—casually-like; in the newspaper, 
‘I mean?” 

The question was not quite so simple as it sounded. 
It appeared as if my new acquaintance were in wait for 
a comment which he himself was eager to supply. And 
I had nothing much to say. 

“It’s difficult, you know, to judge from prints in news- 
papers,” I ventured at last. ‘They are usually execrable 
even as caricatures. But she looks, if I may say so, an 
uncommonly genial woman: feminine—and a practical 
one, too. Not one, I mean, who would be likely to be 
missing, except on purpose—of her own choice, that is.” 
Our eyes met an instant. “The whole business must have 
been a dreadful shock and anxiety to you. And, of 
course, to Miss . . . to your sister, ] mean.” 

“My name,” he retorted abruptly, shutting his eyes 
while a bewildering series of expressions netted them- 
selves on his face, “my name is Bleet.” 

“Miss Bleet,” I added, glancing at the pocket into which 


52 


Missing 
the book had by now disappeared, and speculating, too, | 
why so preposterous an alias should have occurred to 
apparently so ready a tongue. 

“You were saying ‘genial,’”’ he added rapidly. “And 
that is what they all agreed. Even her only male relative 
—an uncle, as he called himself, though I can swear she 
never mentioned him in that or in any other capacity. 
She hadn’t always been what you might call a happy 
woman, mind you. But they were bound to agree that 
those two years under my care—in our house—were the 
happiest in Miss Dutton’s life. We made it a real home 
to her. She had her own rooms and her few bits of 
furniture—photographs and boxes and so on, quite pri- 
vate. It’s a pretty large house considering the rent— 
country, you know; and there was a sort of a new wing 
added to it fifty years or more ago. Old-fashioned, of 
_ course—open fireplace, no bath, enormous kitchen range 
—swallows coal by the bushel—and so on—very incon- 
venient, but cheap. And though my sister was not in a 
position to supervise the housekeeping, there couldn't 
be a more harmless and affectionate creature. To those, 
that is, who were kind to her. She'd run away from 
those who weren’t—just run away and hide. I must 
explain that my poor sister was not quite—was a little 
weak in her intellects—from her childhood. It was al- 
ways a great responsibility. But as time went on,” he 
drew his hand wearily over his face, “Miss Dutton her- 
self very kindly relieved me of a good deal of that. You 
said she looked a practical woman ; so she was.” 

The narrative was becoming steadily more personal, 
and disconcerting. And yet—such is humanity—it was 
as steadily intensifying in interest. A low grumble of 

53 


Missing 

thunder at that moment sounded over the street, and a 
horse clattered down with its van beyond the open door. 
My country friend did not appear to have noticed it. 

“You never know quite where you are with the ladies,” 
he suddenly ejaculated, and glanced piercingly up—for 
at that moment our waitress had drawn near. 

“It’s a “Ighteen,” she said, pencil on lip, and looking va- 
cantly from one to the other of us. 

““°Tghteen,’” echoed her customer sharply; “what’s 
that? Oh, the omnibus. You didn’t say what you meant. 
Thank you.” She hovered on, check-book in hand. 
“And please bring me another cup of coffee.” He 
looked at me as if with the intention of duplicating his 
order. I shook my head. “One cup, then, miss; no 
hurry.” 

The waitress withdrew. 

“It looks as if rain was coming,” he went on, and as 
if he were thirsting for it as much as I was. “As I was 
saying, you can never be quite sure where you are with 
women; and, mind you, Miss Dutton was a woman of 
the world. She had seen a good deal of life—been 
abroad—Gay Paree, Monte Carlo, and all that. Germany 
before the war, too. She could read French as free 
and easy as you could that mennoo there. Paper-bound 
books with pictures on them, and that kind of thing.” 
He was looking at me, I realised, as if there were no 
other way of intimating the particular kind of literature 
he had in mind. 

“IT used to wonder sometimes what she could find in 
us: such a lonely place; no company. ‘Though, of course, 
she was free to ask any friends if she wanted to, and 
talked of them too when in the mood. Good class, to 


54 


Missing 
judge from what she said. What I mean is, she was quite 
her own mistress. And I must say there could not be 
more good humour and so on than what she showed my 
poor sister. At least, until later. She'd talk to her as 
if conversing; and my sister would sit there by the win- 
dow, looking back at her and smiling and nodding just 
as if she were taking it all in. And who knows, perhaps 
she was. What I mean is, it’s possible to have things in 
your head which you can’t quite put into so many words. 
It’s one of the things I look for when I come up to 
London: the faces that could tell a story though what’s 
behind them can’t.” 

I nodded. 

“I can assure you that before a few weeks were over 
she had got to be as much at home with us as if we had 
known her all our lives. Chatty and domesticated, and 
all that. And using the whole house just as if it belonged 
to her. All the other arrangements were easy, too. I 
can say now, and [I said it then, that we never once up to 
then demeaned ourselves to a single word of disagreement 
about money matters or anything else. A woman like 
that, who has been all over the continent, isn’t likely to go 
far wrong inthat. I agree the terms were on the generous 
side; but then, you take me, so were the arrangements. 

“She asked herself to raise them when she had been 
with us upwards of twelve months. But I said ‘No.’ I 
said, ‘A bargain’s a bargain, Edna’—we were ‘Edna’ and 
‘William’ to one another, by then, and my sister too. 
She was very kind to my poor sister; got a specialist up 
all the way from Bath—though for all his prying ques- 
tions he did nothing, as I knew he wouldn’t. You can’t 
take those things so late. Mind you, as I say, the busi- 


ae 


Missing 

ness arrangements were all oi one side. Miss Dutton 
liked things select and comfortable. She liked things to 
go smoothly, as we all do, I reckon. She had been ac- 
customed to smart boarding-houses and hotels—that kind 
of thing. And I did my level best to keep things nice.” 

My stranger’s face dropped into a rather gloomy ex- 
pression, as if poor humanity had sometimes to resign 
itself to things a little less agreeable than the merely 
smooth and nice. He laid down his spoon, which he had 
been using with some vigour, and sipped his coffee. 

“What I was going to explain,” he went on, rubbing 
at his moustache, “is that everything was going perfectly 
easy—just like clockwork, when the servant question came 
up. My house, you see, is on what you may call the large 
side. It’s old in parts, too. Up to then we had had a 
very satisfactory woman—roughish but willing. She was 
the wife, or what you might just as well call the widow, 
of a sailor. I mean he was one of the kind that has a 
ditto in every port, you know. She was glad of the place, 
glad to be where her husband couldn’t find her, even 
though the stipulation was that her wages should be per- 
manent. That system of raising by driblets always leads 
to discontent. And I must say she was a fair tyrant for 
work. 

“Besides her, there was a help from the village— 
precious little good she was. Slummocky—and stupid! 
Still, we had got on pretty well up to then, up to Miss 
Dutton’s time, and for some months after. But cook- 
ing for three mouths is a different thing to two. Be- 
sides, Miss Dutton liked her meals dainty-like: a bit of 
fish, or soup occasionally, toast-rack, tantalus, serviettes 
on the table—that kind of thing. But all that came on 
56 


Missing 
gradual-like—the thin edge of the wedge; until at last, 
well, ‘exacting’ wasn’t in it. 

“And I must say,” he turned his wandering eye once 
more on mine, “I must say, she had a way of addressing 
menials which sometimes set even my teeth on edge. She 
was a lady, mind you—though what that is when the 
breath is out of your body it’s not so easy to say. And 
she had the lady’s way with them—those continental ho- 
tels, I suppose. All very well in a large establishment 
where one works up against another and you can call 
them names behind their backs. But our house wasn’t 
an establishment. It wouldn’t do there: not in the long 
run, even if you had an angel for a general and a cook 
to match. 

“Mind you, as I say, Miss Dutton was always niceness 
itself to my poor sister: never a hard word or a con- 
temptuous look—not to her face nor behind her back, 
not up to then. I wouldn’t have tolerated it either. And 
you know what talking to a party that can only just sit, 
hands in lap, and smile back at you means, or maybe a 
word now and then that doesn’t seem to have anything 
to do with what you’ve been saying. It’s a great afflic- 
tion. But servants were another matter. Miss Dutton 
couldn’t demean herself to them. She lived in another 
world. It was, ‘Do this’; and ‘Why isn’t it done ?—all 
in a breath. I smoothed things over, though they got 
steadily worse and worse, for weeks and weeks, ay, 
months. It wore me to a shadow. 

“And one day the woman—Bridget was her name— 
Irish, you know—she flared up in earnest and gave her, 
as they say, as good as she got. I wasn’t there at the 
time. But I heard afterwards all that passed, and three 


ayy 


Missing 

times over—on the one side at least. I had been into the 
town in the runabout. And when I came home, Mrs. 
Tantrums had packed up her box, got a gig from the 
farm, and was gone for good. It did me a world of 
harm, that did. 

“Pretty well upset, I was too, as you can imagine. I 
said to Miss Dutton, ‘Edna,’ I said, ‘all I am saying is, 
was it necessary to go to such extremes? Not,’ I said, 
‘mind you, Edna that she was all sugar and honey even 
to me. I knew the wrong side of her mouth years be- 
fore you appeared on the scene. What you’ve got to do 
with such people is—to manage—be firm, keep ’em low, 
but manage. It isn’t commonsense to cut off your tongue 
to spite your teeth. She’s a woman, and Irish at that,’ 
I said, ‘and you know what to expect of them.’ 

“I was vexed, that’s a fact, and perhaps I spoke 
rather more sharply than need have been. But we were 
good friends by that time: and if honest give-and-take 
isn’t possible between friends, where are you? I ask 
you. There was by that time too, nothing left over- 
private between us, either. I advised her about her in- 
vestments and so on, though I took precious good care 
not to be personally involved. Not a finger stirring un- 
less she volunteered it first. That all came out too. But 
it was nothing to do with me, now, was it, as man to 
man, if the good lady took a fancy into her head to see 
that my poor sister was not left to what’s called the tender 
mercies of this world after my death? 

“And yet, believe me, they fixed on that, like leeches. 
My hell, they did! At the Enquiry, I mean. And I 
don’t see how much further their decency could have 
gone if they had called it an Inquest; and... .” 

58 | 


Missing 

Yet another low (almost gruff) volley of thunder in- 
terrupted his discourse. He left the sentence in the air; 
his mouth ajar. I have never met any one that made such 
active use of his chin in conversation, by the way, as 
Mr. Bleet did. It must have been exceedingly fatiguing. 
I fancy he mistook just then the expression on my face 
for one of enquiry. He leant forward, pushing down 
towards me that long hairy finger on the marble table- 
top. 

“When I say ‘tender mercies,’ he explained, “I don’t 
mean that my sister would have been left penniless, even 
if Miss Dutton or nobody like her had come into the house. 
There was money of my own too, though, owing to what 
I need not explain’—he half swallowed the words—‘not 
much.” He broke off. “It seems as if we are in for a 
bit of a thunderstorm. But I’d sooner it was here than 
down my way. When you're alone in the house you seem 
to notice the noise more.” 

“TI fancy it won’t be much,” I assured him. “It will 
clear the air.” 

His eyes opened as if in astonishment that any mere 
act of nature could bring such consolation. 

“You were saying,’ I exclaimed, “that you lost your 
maid?” He glanced up sharply. “Though of course,” 
I added hastily, “you mustn’t let me intrude on your 
private affairs.” 

“Not at all; oh, not at all,” he interrupted with relief. 
“T thought you said, ‘lost my head.’ Not at all. It makes 
all the difference to me—I can assure you, to be able to 
go over it like this. Friendly-like. To get a listener 
who has not been fed up on all that gossip and slander. 
It takes some living down, too. Nothing satisfies them: 

5D 


Missing 
nothing. From one week’s end to another you can’t tell 
where they’ll unearth themselves next.” 

It was becoming difficult to prevent a steadily growing 
distaste for my companion from showing itself in my 
face. But then self-pity is seldom ingratiating. For- 
tunately the light where we sat was by now little better 
than dusk. Indeed, to judge from the growing gloom in 
our tea-shop, the heavens at this moment were far from 
gracious. I determined to wait till the rain was over. 
Besides, though my stranger himself was scarcely win- 
ning company, and his matter was not much above the 
sensational newspaper order, the mere zigzagging of his 
narrative was interesting. Its technique, I mean, re- 
minded me of the definition of a crab: “The crab is a 
little red animal that walks backwards.” 

“The fact is,’ he went on, ‘on that occasion—I mean 
about the servant—Miss Dutton and I had words. I 
own it. Not that she resented my taking the thing up in 
a perfectly open and friendly way. She knew she had 
put me in a fair quandary. But my own private opinion 
is that when you are talking to a woman it’s best not to 
bring in remarks about the sex in general. A woman is 
herself or nothing, if you follow me. What she thinks 
is no more than another skin. Keep her sex out of it, 
and she'll be reasonable. But no further. As a matter 
of fact, I never argue with ladies. And I soon smoothed 
that over. It was only a passing cloud. And I must 
say, considering what a lady she was, she took the 
discomforts of having nothing but a good-for-nothing 
slattern in the house very generously, all things con- 
sidered. 

“Mind you, I worked myself, fit for any couple of 
60 


SR A ee a ae 


Missing 
female servants: washed up dishes, laid the table, kept 
the little knick-knacks going. Ay, and I’d go into the 
town to fetch her out little delicacies: tinned soups and 
peaches, and such like: anything she might have a taste 
to. And I taught her to use the runabout for herself, 
though to hear her changing gear was like staring ruin 
in the face. A gallon of petrol to a hank of crimson silk 
—that kind of thing. Believe me, she’d go all those miles 
for a shampoo-powder, or to have tea at a tea-shop— 
though you can’t beat raw new-laid eggs and them on 
the premises. They got to know her there. She was a 
rare one for the fashions: scarves and motor-veils, and 
that kind of thing. But I never demurred. It wasn’t 
for me to make objections, particularly as she’d do a 
little shopping on the housekeeping side as well, now and 
then. Though, mind you, she knew sixpence from a 
shilling, and particularly towards the last. 

“What was the worst hindrance was that my poor sis- 
ter seemed to have somehow come to know there were 
difficulties in the house. I mean that there had begun to 
be. You don’t know how they do it; but they do. And 
it doesn’t add to your patience, I grant, when what you 
have done at one moment is done wrong over again the 
next. But she meant well, poor creature: and scolding at 
her only made things worse. Still, we got along hap- 
pily enough for a time, until”—-he paused once more with 
mouth ajar—“until Miss Dutton took it into her head 
to let matters come to a crisis. Now judging from that 
newspaper cutting I showed you, what would you take the 
lady’s age to be? Allowing, as you might say, for all 
that golden hair ?” 

It was an indelicate question. Though why the mere 

61 


Missing 
fact that Miss Dutton was now missing should intensify 
its indelicacy, it is not easy to say. 

“Happiness makes one look younger than one really 
is,’ I suggested. 

He gaped at me, as if in wonderment that in a world 
of woe he himself was not possessed of a white beard as 
long as your arm. 

““Happiness?’” he echoed. 

“Yes, happiness.” 

“Well, what I mean is, you wouldn’t say she was in 
the filly class; now, would you? MHigh-spirited, easy- 
going, and all that; silly, too, at times: but no longer 
young. Not in her heyday, I mean.” 

I pushed my empty cup aside and looked at him. But 
he looked back at me without flinching, as if indeed it 
was a pleasant experience to be sharing with a stranger 
sentiments so naive regarding “the fair sex.” 

“Mind you, I don’t profess to be a young man either. 
But I can assure you on my word of honour, that what 
she said to me that evening—I was doing chores in the 
kitchen at the time, and she was there too, arranging 
flowers in a vause for supper; she had a dainty taste in 
flowers—well, she asked me why I was so unkind to her, 
so unresponsive, and—it came on me like a thunderbolt.” 

As if positively for exemplification, a sudden clap of 
thunder at that moment resounded overhead. The glasses 
and crockery around us softly tinkled in sympathy. We 
listened in silence to its reverberations dying away across 
the chimney tops; though my companion seemed to be 
taking them in through his mouth rather than through his 
ears. His cheek paled a little. 

62 


Missing 

“That’s what she asked me, I say. And I can tell you 
it took me on the raw. It was my turn to flare up. We 
had words again; nothing much, only a storm in a tea- 
cup.” Instead of smiling at this metaphor in the cir- 
cumstances, he seemed astonished, almost shocked, at its 
aptitude. But he pushed on boldly. 

“And then after I had smoothed things over again, she 
put her cards on the table. Leap Year, and all that tom- 
foolery, not a bit of it! She was in dead earnest. She 
told me what I had guessed already, that she had scarcely 
a friend in the world. Never a word, mind you, of the 
Colonel—interloping old Pepper-face! She assured me, 
as I say, she hadn’t not only a single relative, but hardly 
a friend; that she was, as you might say, alone in life, 
and—well, that her sentiments had become engaged. In 
honour bound I wouldn’t have breathed this to a living 
soul who knew the parties; but to a stranger, if I may say 
so, it isn’t quite the same thing. What she said was—in 
the kitchen there, and me in an apron, mind you, tied 
round me—doing chores—she said—well, in short, that 
she wanted to make a match of it. She had taken a 
fancy to me, and was I agreeable.” There was no vanity 
in his face; only a stark unphilosophical astonishment. 
‘He seemed to think that to explain all is to forgive all; 
and was awaiting my concurrence. 

“You mean she proposed marriage,” I interposed with 
needless pedantry, and at once, but too late, wished the 
word back. For vestiges of our conversation had evi- 
dently reached the counter. Our waitress, still nibbling 
her pencil, was gazing steadily in our direction. And for 
some obscure reason this heat that we were sharing with 

03 


Missing 

the world at large, combined with this preposterous far- 
rago, was now irritating me almost beyond endurance. 
The fellow’s complacency was incredible. 

I beckoned to the young woman. “You said this 
gentleman’s *bus to King’s Cross was No. Eighteen, 
didn’t you?” 

“Yes, “Ighteen,” she repeated. 

“Then would you please bring him an ice.” 

Mr. Bleet gazed at me in stupefaction; a thick colour 
had mounted into his face. “You don’t mean to say,” 
he spluttered, “that J made any such mention of such a 
thing. I’m sure I never noticed it.” 

My impulse had been nothing more than a protest 
against my own boredom and fatigue; but the way he 
had taken it filled me with shame. What could the crea- 
ture’s state of mind be like if his memory was as un- 
trustworthy as that? The waitress retired. 

“Tt’s so devilishly hot in here,’ I explained. “And 
even talking is fatiguing in this weather.” 

“Ay,” he said ina low voice. “It is. But you aren’t 
having one yourself?” 

“No, thank you,” I said, “I daren’t. I can’t take ices. 
Indigestion—it’s a miserable handicap. ... You were 
in the kitchen.” 

There was a pause. He sat looking foolishly at the 
little glass dishful of ice-cream: as surprising a phe- 
nomenon apparently as to an explorer from the torrid 
zone earth’s northern snows must first appear. There 
was a look upon his face as if he had been “hurt,” as if, 
like a child, at another harsh word he might burst out 
crying. 

“I hardly know that it’s worth repeating,” he said at 
64 


Missing 
last lamely. His fine resonant voice had lost its tone. 
“I suppose she intended it kindly enough. And I 
wouldn’t say I hadn’t suspected which way the wind was 
blowing: Willie this, and Willie that. I’ve always been 
William to them that know me, except Bill at school. 
But it was always Willie with her; and a languishing look 
to match. Still, I never expected what came after that. 
It took me aback. 

“There she was, hanging on my every word, looking 
volumes, and me not knowing what to say. In a way 
too, I was attached to her. There were two sides to her, 
I allow that.” He turned away but not, it seemed, in 
order to see the less conspicuous side more clearly. “I 
asked her to let me think things over, and I said it as any 
gentleman would. ‘Let me think it over, Edna,’ I said. 
“You do me honour,’ I said. Her hand was on my arm. 
She was looking at me. God being my witness, I tried to 
spare her feelings. I eased it over, meaning it all for the 
best. You see the prospect of it had no more than oc- 
curred to me. Married life wasn’t what I was after. I 
shouldn’t be as old as I am now—and unmarried, I mean 
—if that had been so. It was uncomfortable to see her 
carrying on like that: too early. But things having come 
to such a pass, well, as you might say, we glided into an 
understanding at last. And with what result? Why 
she made it an occasion for putting her foot down all the 
way round. And hadn’t I known it of old?” 

He looked at me searchingly, with those dog-bright 
eyes, those high-set ears, as if to discover where precisely 
I now was in relation to his confidences. 

“She took the reins, as they say. All in good temper 
for the most part; but there was no mistaking it. Mis- 

65 


Missing 

tress first and Mrs. after, in a manner of speaking. But 
when it came to speaking sharply to my poor sister on a 
matter which you wouldn’t expect even a full-witted per- 
son to be necessarily very quick about at the uptake—lI 
began to suspect I had made a mistake. I knew it then: 
but forewarned isn’t always forearmed. And mistakes 
are easier to make than to put right. It had gone too 
farce 

“Tf you really don’t want that ice, I can easily ask the 
waitress to take it away,” I assured him, if only to bring 
back that wandering empty eye from the reverie into 
which he seemed to have fallen. Or was it that he was 
merely absorbed in the picture of the rain-drenched street 
that was reflected in the looking-glass behind my chair? 

“Thank you,” he said, taking up the spoon. 

“And Miss Dutton left you at last. Did she tell you 
she had any intention of going?” 

“Never,” he asseverated. “Not a word. No, not a 
single word. And if you can’t explain it, well then, why 
go on trying? I say. Not at this late day. But you 
might as well argue with a stone wall. The heat had 
come by then. Last summer, you know: the drought. 
Not the great drought, I mean—but round our parts in 
particular. The whole place was dried up to a tinder; 
cracks in the clay; weeds dying; birds gone. Even the 
trees flagging: and the oaks half eaten up by caterpillars 
already. Meantime, I don’t know how it was—unless, 
perhaps, the heat—but there had been another quarrel. 
They never got that out of me at the Enquiry, though; 
I can tell you. And that was patched up, too. I 
apologised because she insisted. But she had hurt me; 
she had hurt my feelings. And I couldn’t see that mar- 
66 


Missing 
riage was going to be a very practical experiment on those 
lines. But she came round; and considering what a genial 
woman of the world she looks like in that photograph, 
you wouldn’t have guessed, would you, that crying, weep- 
ing, I mean, was much in her way? I found that out, 
too. And it didn’t suit her, either. But she was what 
they call a woman made for affection. And I mean by 
that,’ he broke in emphatically, “‘she liked to monopolise. 
She wasn’t a sharer. We were badly in want of a serv- 
ant ourselves by that time, as you may imagine, Going 
from bad to worse, and me with a poisoned thumb, open- 
ing tins. But she was in want of a servant still more. 
She wanted me. Husbands often are nothing much bet- 
ter. What’s more, I don’t wish to say anything against 
the—against her now; but for the life of me I can’t see 
any reason why she should have gone so far as to insult 
me. And not a week since we were like birds on one 
roost. To insult me, mind you, with my poor sister 
there, listening by! 

“But I had learned a bit by then. I held my tongue, 
though there was a plenty of things to say in reply if 
I could have demeaned myself to utter them. Plenty. 
I just went on looking out of the window, easing myself 
with my foot—we were in the drawing-room at the time 
—and the very sight of the dried-up grass, and the dead 
vegetables, and the sun pouring down out of the sky 
like lava from a volcano would have been enough in 
themselves to finish off most people’s self-restraint. But 
as I say, I just stood there thinking of what I might have 

said, but saying nothing—just let her rant on. 
“Why, for instance, do you suppose she had made out 
weeks before that her investments were bringing in twice 
67 


Missing 

as much as they really did? Why all that stuff about 
Monte Carlo and the lady from America when it was 
only Boulogne and what they call a pension, which in 
plain English is nothing more than lodgings? Mind you,” 
he said, as if to intercept the remark I had no intention of 
making, “mind you, I agree there was a competence, and 
I agree that, apart from a silly legacy to the Home for 
Cats and Dogs and that Belgian knacker trade, she had 
left all there was to leave to my sister—and long before 
what I told you about just now. I saw that in black 
and white. It was my duty. That was all settled. On 
the other hand, how was I to know that she wouldn’t 
change her mind; that she hadn’t been paving the way, 
as you may call it? And why had she deliberately de- 
ceived me? I thought it then, and I think it now, more 
than ever—considering what I have been through. It 
wasn’t treating me fairly, and particularly before she was 
in a position when things couldn’t be altered, so to speak, 
as between husband and wife.” 

Owing to the noise of the rain—and possibly in part 
to his grammar—it was only with difficulty that I could 
now follow what the creature was mumbling. I found 
my attention wandering. A miniature Niagara at least 
eighteen inches wide was at this moment foaming along 
the street gutter while the rain in the middle of the street 
as it rebounded above the smoking asphalt was lifting into 
the air an exquisite mist of spray. I watched it en- 
thralled; it was sweet as the sight of palm-trees to my 
tired hot eyes, and its roar and motion lulled me for a 
moment or two into a kind of hypnotic trance. When I 
came back to myself and my trivial surroundings, I found 


68 


Missing 
my companion eyeing me as if he had eagerly taken ad- 
vantage of these moments of oblivion. 

“That’s the real thing,” he said, as if to humour me, 
beckoning with his thumb over his shoulder. “That 
rain. But it’s waste on only stones.” He eyed it pen- 
sively, turning his head completely round on his narrow 
shoulders to do so. But only for a moment. He re- 
turned to the business in hand as promptly as if we gos- 
sipers had been called to order by the Chairman of a 
Committee. 

“Now it says in that report there which you have 
just been reading, that Miss Dutton had not been seen 
after she left Crowstairs that afternoon of the 3rd of 
July. That’s what it says—in so much print. And I 
say that’s a lie. As it came out later on. And it doesn’t 
make it any truer being in print. It’s inaccurate—proved 
so. But perhaps I ought to tell you first exactly how the 
whole thing came about. Things get so confused in 
memory.’ Once more he wearily drew his hand over his 
face as if to obliterate even the memory itself. “But— 
quite apart from the others—it’s a relief to get things 
clearer even in one’s own mind. The fact is, the whole 
thing was over between us a day or two before. As I 
say, after the last little upset which I told you about, 
things were smoothed out again, as usual. At least on 
her side, though there was precious little in which I was 
really myself at fault. But my own belief is that she 
was an hysterical woman. What I mean is, she didn’t 
need anything to make a fuss about; to fire up over. 
No foundation except just her own mood and feelings. 
I never was what they call a demonstrative person ; it isn’t 


69 


Missing 

in our family. My father himself was a schoolmasterish 
kind of man. ‘It hurt me more than it hurts you’; that 
kind of man. And up to the age of ten I can honestly 
say that I never once heard my mother answer him back. 
She felt it, mind you. He thrashed me little short of 
savage at times. She’d look on, crying; but she kept her- 
self in. She knew it only made matters worse; and she 
died when I was twelve. 

“Well, what I think is this—that Miss Dutton made a 
mistake about me. She liked comfort. Breakfast in 
bed ; slippers at night; hot water to wash in; that kind of 
thing. I'll go further: she was meant for luxury. You 
could see it in her habits. If she had been twice as well 
off, she’d have wanted three times as many luxuries: 
lady’s maid, evening dress, tea-gowns, music in the 
drawing-room—that sort of thing. And maybe it only 
irritated her when she found that I could keep myself 
in and just look calm, whatever she did or said. Hesi- 
tate to say whatever came into her mind ?—not she !—true 
or untrue. Nor actual physical violence, either. Why 
months before, she threw a vause full of flowers at me: 
snowdrops.” 

The expression on his face suddenly became fixed, as 
if at an unexpected recollection. 

“T am not suggesting,” he testified earnestly, “consider- 
ing—considering what came after, that I bear her any 
grudge or malice on account of all that. All I mean is 
that I was pressed and pushed on to a point that some 
would say was beyond human endurance. Maybe it was. 
But what I say is, let,” his voice trembled, “bygones be 
bygones. I will say no more of that. My point is that 
Miss Dutton, after all, was to be, as they say, a bird of 


70 


a 


Missing 
passage. There had been a final flare up and all was 
over between us. Insult on insult she heaped on me. 
And my poor sister there, in her shabby old black dress, 
out peering at us, from between her fingers, trembling in 
the corner like a dumb animal. She had called her in. 

“And me at my wits’ end, what with the servant 
trouble and the most cantankerous and unreasonable lot 
of tradespeople you could lay hands on, north or south. 
I can tell you, I was pretty hard pressed. They dragged 
all that up at the Enquiry. Oh, yes, bless you. Trust 
em for that. Once it’s men against man, then look to it. 
Not a public Enquiry, mind you. No call for that. And 
I will say the police, though pressing, and leaving no 
stone unturned, in a manner of speaking, were gentlemen 
by comparison. But such things leak out. You can’t 
keep a penny-a-liner from gabbing, and even if there had 
been nothing worse to it they’d have made my life a hell 
upon earth.” 

“Nothing worse to it? How do you mean?” 

His glance for the instant was entirely vacant of 
thought. “I mean,” he said stubbornly, after a mo- 
ment’s hesitation, “the hurt to my private feelings. That’s 
what I mean. I can hear her now. And the first thing 
I felt after it was all over, was nothing but relief. We 
couldn’t have hit it off together, not for long: not after the 
first few weeks, anyhow. Better, I say, wash your hands 
of the whole thing. I grant you her decision had left me 
in a nasty pickle. Asa matter of fact, she was to goina 
week, and me to clear up the mess. Bills all over the 
place—fresh butter, mind you, olives, wine, tinned mock 
turtle—that kind of thing; and all down to my account. 
What I feel is, she oughtn’t to have kept on at me like 


71 


Missing 
that right up to the last. Wouldn’t you have thought, 
considering all things, any woman with an ounce of com- 
monsense—not to speak of common caution—would have 
let sleeping dogs lie?” 

He was waiting for an answer. 

“What did her uncle, the Colonel, say to that?” 

“Oh, him,” he intimated with an incredible sneer. “In 
the Volunteers! I was speaking as man to man.” 

“And she didn’t even wait the two or three days, then?” 

“It was the 3rd of July,” he repeated. “After tidying 
things up for the day—and by that time, mind you, every 
drop of water had to be brought in buckets across the 
burnt-up fields from a drying-up pond half a mile away. 
But it was done. I did it. After finishing, I say, all 
the rest of the morning chores, I was sitting there think- 
ing of getting a snack of lunch and then what to do next, 
when I heard a cough—her door had opened; and then 
her footstep on the stairs—slippers.” He held up his 
forefinger as if for caution, and he was speaking with 
extreme deliberation as if, with eyes and senses fixed on 
the scene, he were intent to give me the exactest of records 
in the clearest of terms. “And I said to myself, ‘She’s 
coming! and it’s all to begin again!’ I said it; I knew it. 
‘And face it out? ... then—me?’” He shook his head 
a little like a cat tasting water, but the eyes he showed me 
were like the glazed windows of an empty shop. “No, 
I made myself scarce. I said to myself: ‘Better keep 
your distance. Make yourself scarce; keep out of it.’ 
And heaven help me I had been doing my best to forget 
what had passed the night before and to face what was 
to come. And so—lI went out. 

“It was early afternoon: sultry, like now. And I wan- 


72 


Missing 
dered about the fields. I must have gone miles and never 
met a soul. But if you ask me to say where, then all I 
can say is, Isn’t one field the living image of another? 
And what do you see when your mind isn’t there? All 
round Winstock way—lanes, hedges, corn fields, turnips 
—tramp and tramp and tramp. And it was not until 
about seven o’clock that evening that I got back again. 
Time for supper. I got out the crockery and—and raked 
out the fire. No sign of nobody, nor of my sister either 
—though there was nothing in that: she had a habit of 
sitting up at her bedroom window, and looking out, just 
with her hands in her lap. And the house as still as a 
—as still as a Church. 

“T loafed about a bit in the kitchen. Call her? Well, 
hardly! There was plenty to do. As usual. The sup- 
per, and all that. The village woman had left about 
eleven that morning—toothache. She owned to it. Not 
that that put me about. I can cook a boiled egg and a 
potato well enough for most Christians. But hot meals— 
meals for—well, anyhow, there was nothing hot that eve- 
ning. It was about seven-thirty by then, I suppose; and 
I was beginning to wonder. Then I thought I’d go out 
in the yard and have a look at the runabout—an old Ford, 
you know—I hadn’t had time then for weeks to keep it 
decent. When I got to the shed, there was a strange cat 
eating up some fish-bones; and when I looked in, it was 
gone.” 

“You mean the Ford?” 

“Yes, the Ford. There wasn’t a sign of it. That 
froze me up, I can tell you, for there had been gipsies 
about a day or two before. I rushed into the house and 
called out, ‘Miss Dutton, are you there? The Ford’s 

73 


Missing 

gone. No answer. I can tell you I was just like a 
frenzied man. I looked in the drawing-room—teapot and 
cup on a tray but empty: just sunshine streaming in as 
if nothing had happened. Then I looked into her little 
parlour: boudoir, she called it. Nothing doing. Then 
I went upstairs and tapped on her bedroom door. ‘Miss 
Dutton,’ I said, ‘have you seen anything of the Ford? 
It’s gone.” And then I looked in. That was the queer 
thing about it. They all said that. That it never oc- 
curred to me, I mean, that she was not in the car herself. 
But what I say is—how can you think of everything be- 
fore you say it, and wasn’t it I myself that said I had 
said it? 

“Anyhow, I looked in: I suppose a man can do that 
in his own house and his car gone from under his very 
eyes! And believe me, the sight inside was shocking. 
I’m a great stickler myself for law and order, for neat- 
ness, I mean. I had noticed it before: it irritated me; 
in spite of all her finery, she was never what you would 
call a tidy woman. But that room beat everything. 
Drawers flung open, dresses hugger-mugger, slippers, 
bags, beadwork, boxes, gimcracks all over the place. But 
not a sign of her. I looked—everywhere. She wasn’t 
there, right enough. Not—not a sign of her. She was 
gone. And—and I have never seen her since.” 

The rain was over, and the long sigh he uttered seemed 
to fill the whole tea-shop as if it were a faint echo of 
the storm which had ceased as suddenly as it had be- 
gun. The sun was wanly shining again, gilding the 
street. 

“You at once guessed, I suppose, the house had been 
broken into, while you were out?” 


74 





Missing 

He kept his eyes firmly on mine. “Yes,” he said. 
“That’s what I thought—at first.” 

“But then, I think you said a minute or two ago that 
Miss Dutton was actually seen again?” 

He nodded. “That’s just it,” he said, as if with in- 
credulous lucidity. “So you see, the other couldn’t have 
been. The facts were against it. She was seen that 
very evening,” he said, “and driving my Ford. By more 
than one, too. Our butcher happened to be outside his 
shop door, no friend of mine either. It was a Saturday; 
cutting up pieces for the 4d. and 6d. trays, and he saw 
her going by: saw the number, too. It was all but broad 
daylight, though it’s a narrow street. It was about seven 
then, he said, because he had only just wound his clock. 
There she was; and a good pace too. And who could be 
surprised if she looked a bit unusual in appearance? It’s 
exactly what you’d expect. You don’t bolt out of a house 
you have lived in comfortable for two or three years as 
neat as a new pin.” 

“What was wrong with her?” 

“Oh, the man was nothing better than a fool, though 
promptitude itself when it came to asking a good custo- 
mer to settle up. He said he’d have hardly recognised 
her. There, in my car, mind you, and all but broad day- 
light.” 

“But surely,’ I said as naturally as possible, “even if 
it is difficult sometimes to trace a human being, it is not 
so easy to dispose of a car. Wasn’t that ever found?” 

He smiled at me, and in a more friendly way than I 
should have deemed possible in a face so naturally inex- 
pressive. 

“You've hit the very nail on the head,” he assented. 


75 


Missing 

“They did find the car—on the Monday morning. In 
fact it was found on the Sunday by a young fellow out 
with his sweetheart, but they thought it was just waiting 
—picking flowers, or something. It had been left inside 
a fir-copse about a couple of hundred yards from a rail- 
way station, a mile or so out of the town.” 

“Just a countryfied little railway station, I suppose? 
‘Had the porter or anybody noticed a lady?” 

“Countryfied—ay, maybe: but the platform crowded 
with people going to and fro for their week’s suse 
besides a garden party from the Rectory.” 

“The platform going into the town?” 

“Yes, that’s it,” said my friend. “Covering her 
tracks.” 

At that moment I noticed one of our waitress’s bright- 
red “Eighteens” whirling past the tea-shop door. It 
vanished. 

“She had had a letter that morning—postmark Chicago,” 
the now far-too-familiar voice pushed on industriously. 
“The postman noticed it, being foreign. It’s my belief 
that caused it. But mind you, apart from that, though 
I’m not, and never was, complaining, she’d treated me, 
well ” But he left the sentence unfinished while he 
clumsily pushed about with his spoon in the attempt to 
rescue a fly that had strayed in too far in pursuit of his 
sweet cold coffee. He was breathing gently on the hap- 
less insect. 

“And I suppose, by that time, you had given the 
alarm ?” 

“Given the alarm?” he repeated. “Why?” 

The sudden frigidity of his tone confused me a little. 
76 





Missing 
“Why,” I said, “not finding Miss Dutton in the house, 
didn’t you let anybody know?” 

“Now my dear sir,” he said, “I ask you. How was I 
to know what Miss Dutton was after? I wasn’t Miss 
Dutton’s keeper; she was perfectly at liberty to do what 
she pleased, to come and go. How was I to know what 
she had taken into her head? Why, I thought for a bit 
it was a friendly action considering all things, that she 
should have borrowed the car. Mind you, I don’t say 
I wasn’t disturbed as well, her not leaving a word of ex- 
planation, as she had done once before—pinned a bit of 
paper to the kitchen table—‘Yours with love, Edna’—that 
sort of thing. Though that was when everything was 
going smooth and pleasant. What I did first was to go 
off to a cottage down the lane and enquire there. All out, 
except the daughter in the wash-house. Not a sight or 
sound of car or Miss Dutton, though she did recollect 
the honk of a horn sounding. ‘Was it my horn?’ I 
asked. But they’re not very observant, that kind of young 
woman. Silly-like. Besides, she wasn’t much more than 
a child.” 

“And your sister: where actually was she, after all?” 

He looked at me as if once more in compliment of my 
Sagacity. 

“That, I take it—to find and question her, I mean, was 
a matter of course. I went up to her room, opened the 
door, and I can hear myself actually saying it now: 
‘Have you seen anything of Edna, Maria?’ 

“It was very quiet in her room—stuffy, too, and for 
the moment I thought she wasn’t there; and then I saw 
her—I detected her there—sitting in the farthest corner 


77 


Missing 

out of the light. I saw her white face turn round, it 
must have been covered up. ‘Where’s Edna, Maria?’ I 
repeated. She shook her head at me, sitting there be- 
yond the window. I could scarcely see her. And you 
don’t seem to have realised that any kind of direct or 
sudden question always confused her. It didn’t seem she 
understood what I was saying. In my belief it was noth- 
ing short of brutal the way they put her through it. I 
mean that Colonel, as he calls himself. Over and over 
and over again. 

“Well, we weren’t in any mood for food, as you may 
guess, when eight, nine, went by—and no sign of her. 
At last it was no use waiting any longer; but just to 
make sure, I went over to the farm two miles or so away 
—a little off the road, too, she must have taken to the 
town. We were still pretty friendly there. It was about 
half-past nine, I suppose, and they had all gone to bed. 
The dog yelled at me as if it was full moon and he had 
never seen me before. I threw a handful of gravel up 
at the old man’s window, and I must say, considering all 
things, he kept his temper pretty well. Specially as he 
had seen nothing. Nothing whatever, he said. 

“ ‘Well,’ I said, speaking up at him, and they were my 
very words, ‘I should like to know what’s become of her.’ 
He didn’t seem to be as anxious as I was—thought she’d 
turn up next morning. “That kind of woman knows best 


what she’s about,’ he said. So I went home and went 


to bed, feeling very uneasy. I didn’t like the feel of it, 
you understand. And I suppose it must have been about 


three or four in the morning when I heard a noise in the 


house.” 
“You thought she had come back?” 
78 


Missing 

“What?” he said. 

“T say, you thought she had come back ?” 

“Yes, of course. Oh yes. And I looked out of my 
bedroom door over the banisters. By that time there was 
a bit of moonlight showing, striking down on the plaster 
and oilcloth. It was my sister, with an old skirt thrown 
over her nightgown. She was as white as a sheet, and 
shivering. 

““Where have you been, Maria?’ I asked her in as 
gentle a voice as I could make it. The curious thing is, 
she understood me perfectly well. I mean she answered 
at once, because often I think really and truly she did 
understand, only that she couldn’t as quickly as most 
people collect her wits as they say. 

“She said, mumbling her words, she had been looking 
for her. 

“*Looking for who?’ I said, just to see if she had taken 
me right. 

“For her,’ she said. 

““For Edna?’ I asked. ‘And why should you be look- 
ing for Edna this time of night? I spoke a little more 
sternly. 

“She looked at me, and the tears began to roll down 
her face. 

““For God’s sake, Maria, why are you crying?’ I said. 

“*Oh,’ she said, ‘she’s gone. And she won’t come back 
now.’ 

“I put my arm round her and drew her down on to 
the stairs. ‘Compose yourself,’ I said to her, ‘don’t 
shiver and shake like that.’ I forgot she had been stand- 
ing barefoot on the cold oilcloth. ‘What do you mean, 
Gone? Don’t take on so. Who’s to know she won't 


79 


Missing 
come back safe and sound?’ I am giving you the words 
just as they came out of our mouths, 

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘William, you know better than me 
—I won’t say anything more. Gone. And never know- 
ing that I hadn’t forgotten how kind she was to me!’ 

“*Kind, my girl!’ I said. ‘Kind! In good part, may- 
be,’ I said, ‘but not surely after what she said to you that 
day ?” 

“But I could get nothing more out of her. She shrank 
up moaning and sobbing. She had lost herself again, her 
hair all draggled over her eyes, and she kept her face 
averted from me, and her shoulders were all humped, 
shaking under my hands—you know what women are. 
So I led her off to her room and made her as comfortable 
as I could. But all through the night I could hear her 
afterwards when I went to listen, and talking too. 

“You can tell I was by now in a pretty state myself. 
That was a long night for me. And what do you think: 
when I repeated that conversation to the Colonel, and 
the Inspector himself standing by, he as good as told me 
he didn’t believe me. ‘Friendly questions’! I could have 
wrung his nuse. But then by that time my poor sister 
couldn’t put two words together, he bawled at her so; 
until even the Inspector said it was not fair on her, and 
that she wouldn’t be any use, anyhow, whatever hap- 
pened.” 

Once again there fell a pause in my stranger’s dis- 
jointed story. He took two or three spoonfuls in rapid 
succession of his half-melted ice-cream. Even though 
the rain and the storm had come and gone, the air was 
not appreciably cooler, or rather it was no less heavy and 


stagnant. Our waitress had apparently given us up as 
80 





Missing 
lost souls, and I glanced a little deprecatingly at the notice, 
“No gratuities,” on the wall. 

“How long did the drought last after that?” I inquired 
at last. 

“The drought?” said my friend. “The questions you 
ask! Why, it broke that very night. Over an inch of 
rain we had in less than eight hours.” 

“Well, that, at any rate, I suppose, was something of 
a comfort.” 

“T don’t see quite why,” he retorted. 

“And then you informed the Police?” 

“On the Sunday.” He took out a coloured silk hand- 
kerchief from the pocket of his neat pepper-and-salt 
jacket, and blew his nose. It is strange how one can ac- 
tually anticipate merely from the general look of a man 
such minute particulars as the trumpeting of a nose. 
Strange, I mean, that all the parts and properties of human 
beings seem to hang so closely together, as if in positive 
confusion. Anyhow, the noise resounded through the 
glass-walled marbled room as sharp as cockcrow. 

“Well,” he said, “that’s where I stand. Looking at 
me, you wouldn’t suppose perhaps that everything that 
a man wants most in this world has been destroyed and 
poisoned away. I had no call perhaps to be confiding in 
a mere stranger. But you couldn’t credit the relief. I 
have nothing left now. I came up here to lose myself 
in the noise—so shocking quiet it is, there, now. But I 
have to go back—can’t sleep much, though: wake up shout- 
ing. But what’s worst is the emptiness: it’s all perished. 
I don’t want anything now. Id as lief die and have 
done with it, if I could do it undriven. I’ve never seen 
a desert, but I reckon I know what tne inside of one’s 

8I 


Missing 

like now. I stop thinking sometimes, and get dressed 
without knowing it. You wouldn’t guess that from my 
appearance, I dare say. But once begin living as you 
feel underneath living is, where would most of us be? 
They have hounded me on and they’ve hounded me down, 
and presently they’ll be sealing me up, and me never 
knowing from one day to another what news may come 
of—of our friend. And my sister gone and all.” 

“She isn’t ‘missing’ too, I hope?’ As I reflect on it, 
it was a vile question to have put to the man. I don’t see 
how anything could have justified it. His face was hke 
a burnt-out boat. The effect on him was atrocious to wit- 
ness. His swarthy cheek went gray as ashes. The hand 
on the marble table began to tremble violently. 

“Missing?” he cried. “She’s dead. Isn’t that good 
enough for your” 

At this, no doubt because I was hopelessly in the wrong, 
I all but lost control of myself. 

“What do you mean?” I exclaimed in a low voice. 
“What do you mean by speaking to me like that? Haven't 
I wasted the better part of a Saturday afternoon listening 
to a story which I could have picked up better in your own 
county newspaper? What’s it all to me, may I ask? I 
want to have nothing more to do with it—or you either.” 

“You didn’t say that at the beginning,” he replied 
furiously, struggling to his feet. “You led me on.” 

“Led you on, by God? What do you mean by such 
a piece of impudence? I say I want nothing more to do 
with you. And if that’s how you accept a kindness, take 
my advice and keep your troubles to yourself in future. 
Let your bygones be bygones. And may the Lord have 
mercy on my soul.” 

82 


Missing 

It was a foul outburst, due in part, I hope, to the heat ; 
in part of to the suffocating dehumanising foetor which 
spreads over London when the sun has been pouring down 
on its bricks and mortar as fiercely as on the bones and 
sands of some Eastern mud village. 

My stranger had sat down again abruptly, had pushed 
his ice away from him and covered his face with his 
hands. His shoulders were jumping as if with hiccups. 
It was fortunate perhaps that at the moment there was 
no other eater in the café. But the waitresses were clus- 
tered together at the counter. They must have been 
watching us for some little time. And the manageress 
was there, too, looking at us like a scandalised hen over 
her collar through her pince-nez. We were evidently 
causing a disturbance—on the brink of a “scene.” A 
visionary placard flaunted across my inward eye: Fracas 
in a Restaurant. 

I too sat down, and beckoned peremptorily to the young 
lady who had been so attentive about the "bus. 

“My bill, please,” I said—“this gentleman’s and mine.” 

And then, foolishly, I added, “It’s hot, isn’t it ?” 

She made no reply until, after damping her lead pencil 
she had added up her figures and had handed me between 
her finger-tips the mean scrap of paper. Then she in- 
formed me crisply, in fastidious Cockney, that some 
people seemed to find it hotter than most, and that it was 
nearly closing time, and would I please pay at the desk. 

My accomplice had regained a little of his self-restraint 
by now. He put out a wavering hand and took up his 
hard felt hat. It was almost incredible that so marked 
a change should have come over so insensitive a face in 
that brief space of time. Its touch of bravado, its cold 

83 


Missing 

clear stare as of a watchful dog, even the neatness of it, 
had disappeared. He looked ten years older—lost and 
abandoned. He put out his other hand for the check. 
It was a curious action for a man with an intense closeness 
—if not meanness—clearly visible on his features: “I 
should prefer, if you don’t mind, to pay my bill myself,” 
he said. 

“Not at all,’ I replied brusquely. “It was my ice- 
cream. I must apologise for having been so abrupt.” 

He tried to smile; and it was like the gleam of a sickly 
evening sunshine after heavy winter rain. 

“It’s broken me: that’s all I can say,” he said. “What 
I say is, you read such things in the newspapers, but you 
don’t know what they mean to thes as are most con- 
cerned. I don’t see how you can.’ 

I hesitated. A furious contest—dim spa eagled 
figures silhouetted, as it were, against a background of 
utter black—seemed to be proceeding in some dream in 
my mind, a little beyond actual consciousness. “Well,” 
I blurted, “I hope time will make things better. I can 
guess what I should feel like myself in similar circum- 
stances. If I were you, I should...” But at sight of 
him, the words, I am thankful to say, faded out before I 
could utter them. ‘If I were you’-—how easy! But how 
is that metamorphosis possible ? 

He looked at his hat; he looked at his ice-cream, now 
an insipid mush; he looked anxiously and searchingly at 
the table—marked over with the hieroglyphics of dark 
ugly marble. And at last he raised his eyes—those in- 
expressive balls of glass—and looked at me. He changed 
his hat from his right to his left hand, and still look- 
ing at me, hesitated, holding the empty hand out a little 
84 


: 
: 





Missing 

above the table. Then turning away, he drew it back. 

I pretended not to have noticed the action. “There 

should be another Eighteen in a few minutes,” I volun- 

teered. “And I think I noticed a stopping-place a few 
yards down.” 

Nevertheless I couldn’t for the moment leave him there 
—to the tender mercies of those censorious young wait- 
resses in their exquisitely starched caps. “I am going 
that way,’ I said. “Shall I see you into it?” 

“It’s the heat,” he said. “No, thank you. You have 
Beer ai.” | 

With a gasp I repelled as well as I could the distaste 
for him that was once more curdling as if with a few 
drops of vinegar my very blood. What monsters of ha- 
tred and uncharitableness we humans can be! And what 
will my little record look like, I wonder, when the se- 
crets of all hearts are opened. 

It seemed for the time being as though the whole of 
my right arm had become partially paralysed. But with 
an effort I put out my hand at last; and then he, too, his 
—a large green solitaire cuff-link showing itself against 
his wristband as he did so. We shook hands—though I 
doubt if a mere fleshly contact can express much while 
the self behind it is dumb with instinctive distaste. 

Besides, the effect on him even of a friendly action as 
frigid as this was horribly disconcerting. It reminded me 
of ice pitted and crumbling in a sudden thaw. He seemed 
to have been reduced to a state of physical and spiritual 
helplessness, as if by an extremity of emotion, or by a 
drug. It was nauseating. It confused me and made me 
ashamed and miserable. I turned away abruptly; paid 
our bill at the desk, and went out. 


85 


The Connoisseur 
Park Street 


Io T was a narrow discreet street, and, in 
this late evening twilight, all but deserted. 
There had been rain, bringing with it an 
earthy fragrance from the not far dis- 
tant park, and small clear puddles of 
: 4 water filled the hollows of the paving- 
stones. Ciinistty picking his way between them, St. Dus- 
man came shuffling along between the houses to keep a 
rather belated tryst. He paused now and again to ex- 
amine the numbers on the fanlights, and at last halted, 
at No. 13; where he stood for a few moments peering in 
over the spear-headed palisade that guarded its area. As 
yet the curtains of the shallowly curved window abutting 
on the street had not been drawn nor its shutters closed. 
From a candelabrum on a lacquer Chinese table in the 
midst of the room electric tapers cast their beams upon 
the exquisite objects that stood around them. This sharp 
metallic light bathed ivory and porcelain, the wax-like 
flowers in their slim vase, the few pictures, as if they were 
the sacred relics of a shrine. 
The old creature’s eyes gazed vaguely through their 
magnifying spectacles at this scene of still life, then 
groped onward towards the figure of a man, as yet ap- 
parently in his early thirties, who now stood in the door- 
way, slim, sleek, dark—as if for foil to the very vase on 
86 





The Connoisseur 


the table with its pale green leaves and flowers. His neat 
head was stooping forward and inclined a little towards 
his left shoulder, for at that moment with intense interest 
and vigilance he was vainly endeavouring to see the old 
man out there in the darkening street as clearly as St. 
Dusman could see him. 

The old man hesitated no longer. With the aid of its 
wrought steel handrail he mounted the three shallow 
steps of the outer door, under its narrow shell-shaped 
porch, and rapped softly with his knuckles on the panel. 
The stranger himself hastened to open it, though for an 
instant or two he seemed to have paused with fingers on 
its catch, and after the briefest scrutiny of the face of 
his visitor from penetrating green-grey eyes, led him, al- 
most as though surreptitiously, into the very room which 
the saint had surveyed from without. And he himself 
drew their curtains over the windows. 

“You may not have been expecting me, Mr. Blumen?” 
said the old man courteously, still a little breathless. “AI- 
though, indeed, I am a little late. My friends detain me 
at times. And this is my last errand for the day.” 

_ Mr. Blumen’s eyes were now steadily fixed on his visi- 
- tor’s face. “I must confess,” he replied, “that I was not 
expecting you. Not, I mean, to-night.” 

“But you had not entirely forgotten me?’ the old man 
pressed him whimsically. “You have now and then 
given a passing thought to me? [I leave footprints out- 
side.” 

Mr. Blumen smiled, at least with his lips. “You bring 
- back at least one old memory—an experience often re- 
peated when I was a small boy in Bath, you know. The 
experience, I mean, of being ‘called-for.’ Now and then, 

87 


The Connoisseur 


for there are many kinds of parties, it was a relief, a 
positive godsend.” 

There was just a hint of the formal in this rapid and 
not unfriendly speech. It had been uttered too in a low- 
ish voice, though, even at that, the characteristic slight 
lisp and blurred r’s had been detectable. 

The old saint peered up at the young man over his 
thick-glassed spectacles. “I can well understand it,’ he 
said at last. “It meant returning home. Ours is a 
longer journey, Mr. Blumen.” 

The dark eyes had sharpened. “It has a goal, then?’ 

“Surely! replied the old man. “Were you uncertain 
even of that? Not,” he added candidly, “not that the 
metaphor carries us quite all the way. Lassitude fol- 
lows after most races; and what are called goals and 
prizes may be disappointing. But what—if I may ven- 
ture—suggested to you that any journey in this world, in 
any precise meaning of the word, has an end?” 

“Well,” replied Mr. Blumen, “there are many philos- 
ophies, and one may listen to all without being persuaded 
to accept any.” 

“But hardly without divining any—just on one’s own 
account?” returned the old man, almost as if he were 
smilingly bent on coaxing a secret out of a child. 
“Wouldn’t that be a little unfair to the mere facts of the 
case? Now I'll be bound, Mr. Blumen, when you were 
a small boy you must have dreamed now and then? So 
far at least you were conscious of circles within circles 
—and without—so to say?” 

There was remarkably little of the childish in the keen, 
ashen face confronting him. The dark, large-pupilled 
eyes had wandered almost stealthily from point to point 
88 


The Connoisseur 


of the objects around them, every one of which seemed 
now to be flashing secret signals one to the other in this 
motionless creek of air. 

“Well possibly,” replied Mr. Blumen. “But even a 
pessimist would agree that it is as well to make the best 
one can of the one ‘circle—without vexing oneself too 
much with shallow and futile speculations concerning any 
other. And optimists; well ” a slight shrug of the 
narrow shoulders completed the sentence. “I must be 
quite candid, though. Iam unconscious of the least wish 
in the world to bid adieu to what they call ‘things as they 
are —to things, that is, as they appear to me to be. I 
realise, none the less, that you have obligations. And— 
thank you for fulfilling them so considerately.” 

At this, the old man folded one hand over the other 
under his loose sleeves, sighed, and quietly seated himself 
on the edge of a chair that stood near-by. “Thank you, 
Mr. Blumen,” he said; “I will enjoy a moment’s needed 
rest.” 

“Forgive me,” cried the other hastily, turning as he 
spoke towards the tiny sideboard—riding there in the of- 
fing, as it were, of this bright inward pool of silence, with 
its delicate cargo of Venetian glass and wine. 

But his visitor pleasantly waved this little courtesy 
aside. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Blumen,” he ex- 
plained, “and you are exceedingly tolerant, I haven’t the 
head for it. And though I am familiar with our route 
—almost excessively familiar—we shall still need our 
combined cold wits to face it out. You were saying 
‘things as they are’-—a stimulating phrase enough in it- 
self. Still, I have no very close knowledge of what you 
call the world; apart, I mean, from my daily duties. May 


89 





The Connoisseur 


I assume that ‘things as they are’ now surround us?” 
The aged eyes peered carefully and cautiously once more 
through their thick glasses. “That is so? Please, then, 
tell me why you are disinclined to leave them. You have 
seen a good deal of them?” 

Mr. Blumen drew in his underlip as if to moisten 
it with his tongue. He paused; in search of words. 
“Well,” he ventured at last, “partly, I suppose, because of 
those weeds of superstitious fear planted in one’s mind 
when one is young; partly because life can be uncommonly 
entertaining; and partly because I dislike leaving what 
I have spent a good many years making my own.” 

“Making your own!” echoed the gentle old voice a 
little drily ; though there was a twinkle in its owner’s eye. 
“But you will not be ceasing to think when we make a 
start. And surely it is only thoughts, hopes, desires, 
dreams, and so on that you can really claim as having been 
made your own. 

“In a sense,” agreed his quarry. “But then I’m no 
Platonist, either. One’s friends, one’s pursuits, one’s 
possessions”—he made a little gesture with his right hand 
that till that moment had been reposing in his pocket— 
“surely they are the very proofs of one’s self that one 
hungers for. Not of course that they can be permanent ; 
or need be.” 

“Friends are friends,” said the old man. “I can un- 
derstand that. But possessions? I take it, Mr. Blu- 
men, that you would include in that category what I see 
around me. Perhaps you would tell me why you value 
them so highly. Were there not things less perishable 
to possess; things that of their own nature would be less 
inclined to bid you good-bye? That old image of Kuan 


go 





The Connoisseur 


Yin over there, for example, is she any the more or less 
a symbol than the very ferocious onion-green dragon dis- 
playing his tail on that pot yonder? Better both in the 
imagination, don’t you think, Mr. Blumen, than—well, 
round one’s neck? Besides, earth-time is fleeting. Was 
it ever, do you feel, worth while to do more than merely 
borrow its energies, apart from much else; and be grate- 
ful?” 

“To whom?” Mr. Blumen blurted. 

“That is a question,” retorted the old man serenely, 
hugging his hands a little closer under their wide sleeves— 
“that is a question which it would take rather more earth- 
time than you and I have at our disposal just now to 
answer.” 

The shoulders beneath the neat dinner-jacket slightly 
lifted themselves. “We don’t always expect answers to 
our questions,” he said. 

“Well now, see here,” said the old man, and he 
vigorously readjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his 
broad and rather stumpy nose. ‘There are many similar 
things to these in every house in every neighbouring 
street, are there not? Is it just the sense of possession 
that is the charm? Or of being possessed ?” 

“Things similar, perhaps,” smiled Mr. Blumen indul- 
gently. “But I need hardly suggest to an adept like your- 
self that many of the specimens around us at this mo- 
ment are practically unique. And do you mean to 1m- 
ply, sir, that the beauty and rarity of a thing amount to 
nothing in what perhaps—whether expressed in earth- 
time or otherwise—you would agree to call the long run?” 

“Come, come,” said the old man, “surely rarity is the 
reward of a mere acquisitiveness? While as for beauty; 


gI 


The Connoisseur 


indeed, Mr. Blumen, in my humble office—a little ar- 
duous, too, at times, if I may confess it—there is not much 
leisure for beauty. Still, I think you will agree that what 
you and I mean by the word, and so far as we are per- 
sonally concerned, it depends solely upon the eyes in our 
heads. And we have a good many, you know. With 
the exception, too, of the rare flowers on your table— 
specimens, I suspect, which would hardly be recognised — 
even by their less remote ancestors—everything here, I 
notice, is—what shall we call it—of human workman- 
ship.” 

“They are works of art,” agreed Mr. Blumen. “They 
represent years of human skill, human delight, and hu- 
man devotion and desire. What have you against them? 
For that matter what has he against them who has so 
punctually provided me with your company this eve- 
ning?’ A very sober countenance now scrutinised Mr. 
Blumen—and the old man, as if to suit posture to face, 
seemed to have composed himself even more heavily in 
his chair. He gazed hard, but made no answer; then 
turned his head and almost cautiously surveyed the ob- 
jects around him as one by one they met his eye. 

All the familles were there: noire, verte, and rose; each 
of them signally represented by elegant ambassadors, 
only the more amiable and acceptable for their extreme 
age. On half a dozen varieties of gods, on fabulous 
heroes and monsters renowned in old tales, and on ex- 
quisite Tanagra figures, and shapes of beast, bird, and 
fable, made small in priceless images of stone, earthen- 
ware, porcelain, enamel, ivory, metal, alighted his gentle 
glance. The faintly greenish glass on table and side- 
board, like colourless and heatless crystal flame, lifted its 


Q2 


The Connoisseur 


burden of gimcracks, sweetmeats, and liqueurs, a few 
inches aloft. 

The rugs beneath the old man’s mud-stained feet by 
far excelled in blended colour and design the minute 
French masterpieces in paint, and the worn dimmed 
tapestry that here and there relieved the delicate gilt of 
the walls and of the few chairs. A smiling cherub dis- 
guised as Father Time stood on tiptoe with uplifted 
scythe above the minute gilt clock ticking out Mr. Blu- 
men’s envious moments upon the carved chimney-piece. 
The fragile peace around him and his visitor indeed was 
so tenuous it seemed that at any moment it might ex- 
plode, and shatter itself into its component atoms. When 
the old man’s voice again broke the silence, it was posi- 
tively as if he himself had shattered in sheer actuality 
some crystal image lifting itself into the.still, elastic air. 

“You would, I believe, Mr. Blumen, be surprised,” that 
voice was murmuring gently, “you would be surprised 
at the range of humanity that lies reflected around us. 
‘Here and there our company—and, as you well know, 
whatever a man does is to some extent a mirror of what 
he is: here and there (and forgive me for confessing it) 
that company, I say, is detestable to the last degree. You 
will be well rid of it. There are poisons that enter by 
the eye as well as in the blood. What is even worse— 
except for that moth searching the shadows over there, 
whose presence no doubt is explained by my poor com- 
pany—I perceive here no faintest sign of life. Of life, 
I mean, here and now.” 

A thin dark cloud had mounted into Mr. Blumen’s 
pallid face. “If you had consented to delay your visit 
even by half an hour,” he retorted, with a contemptuous 


93 


The Connoisseur 


gesture towards the two chairs drawn up to the table, 
“your last remark would hardly have been to the point.” 

“Do not misdoubt me,” replied his visitor courteously. 
“I have no very acute intelligence. But I have heard the 
rumours of busy domestic sounds from below; and I de- 
tect preparations for a visitor. But I meant by life a 
happy freedom of the spirit rather than mere amusement 
of the body. A life delighted in.” 

“A pet canary, perhaps?’ But the voice was almost 
too tired to be insolent. 

“Why not indeed?” replied the old man, “if you took 
a lively pleasure in it. Still, cages remain cages; and 
you yourself would agree with me that heart and soul 
you yourself are something of a recluse. And this I 
gather is your hermitage. And I have seldom in a pretty 
wide experience of such things seen a cage more elaborate. 
You are content with it?” 

Mr. Blumen stared a little heavily into the face of his 
visitor. “If you know anything of the society in this 
neighbourhood, and if you mean that I enjoy solitude, 
then I am in complete agreement with you.” 

“So would any chrysalis be,” said his visitor almost 
gaily. “I grieve with all my heart that you are com- 
pelled to resign things you have grown to care for— 
hoarded, Mr. Blumen; that it is now too late, I mean, to 
have given them away.” | 

Mr. Blumen laid a gentle hand upon the corner of the 
chimney-piece. For an instant their ashen wax-like lids 
descended over his green-grey eyes. 

“And now,” went on his visitor gently, rising to his 
feet, “that last taxicab has passed out of hearing. There 


94 


The Connoisseur 


is more than half a moon to-night over Whinnimoor. It 
is time for us to be off.” 


SASURAT 


The soft white glare of snow fringed the crests of the 
mountains that surrounded the tortuous valley beneath 
them. Blossoming trees and coloured drifts of flowers 
mounted up almost to their frozen margin. The sun 
ascending into the dark blue vault of the sky, though it 
was but an hour or two after break of day, cast beams so 
fierce upon their flanks that the lawn-like mists were al- 
ready swirling in the heat, showering their dew on leaf 
and flower and rock. 

St. Dusman had made his way into the valley in the 
small hours, and now sat drowsing on a stone beside 
which roared a torrent of green water. He had removed 
his sandals in order to lave his feet in the coldness, and 
now, it would appear, as if every flame-plumed bird in 
the thickets around him, and every puffing breath of wind 
that came wandering across the precipitous gorges, were 
inviting the spirit of the old man to return to the world, 
to slip out of sleep and waken again. With mouth agape, 
however, he nodded on. Flies and butterflies of in- 
numerable dyes flashed and fluttered in the empty air 
around him. Fish of hardly less brave a livery sported 
with fin and tail over the coloured stones that tessellated 
the bed of the stream that flowed beside him. 

Two or three hundred feet above, at the foot of one of 
the lower peaks glittering in the sunrays with rainbow 
flashes from its exposed face of rock and quartz, a moun- 


95 


The Connoisseur 


tain leopard now stole into view, lifting its gentle 
head into the sunshine. With twitching brows and 
whiskers, it snuffed the morning air, while its amber eyes 
rested for a moment upon the stooping figure of the old 
man crouched up and motionless in sleep far beneath 
him. With a faint uneasy mew, it then lifted its gaze 
upwards towards a pair of eagles circling in the enor- 
mous cavity of the now starless heavens. Then curling 
its narrow beautiful body upon the sward under the rocky 
wall of the mountain, it couched with head on paws, and 
composed itself to sleep. 

It was the scream of a parrakeet that pierced through 
the old man’s dreams at last. His eyes opened, he raised 
his head and looked around him. Where all had been 
dark with the gloom of night was now radiant with day. 
He rose to his feet and shuffled towards a huge spread- 
ing tree from amid whose swaying branches of foliage, 
almost brushing the ground beneath them with their 
blooms, he could wait and watch unseen. Resting his 
hand upon a smooth bough of the tree a little above his 
head, he contemplated the scene around him. 

A smile spread over his seamed, weather-worn old face 
as his eyes roved to and fro. For twenty or thirty paces 
distant from him on a smooth drift of sward stood, as it 
were, a low small arbour woven of dried grass and rushes, 
and roofed with patches of moss and coloured feathers 
even. No bigger than a beehive though it was, it showed 
as conspicuous on the turf as a green oasis in the wilder- 
ness, or an isle of coral rising gently with its palms and 
tamarisks from out of the sea. 

Some small creature, it was evident, had diligently col- 


96 


The Connoisseur 


lected together for its pleasure a few of the more spar- 
kling and garish objects that lay within reach—muscous 
growths, for example, that flourished only in the denser 
and darker thickets of the surrounding forest, the bark 
of a silvery shrub that ventured nearest of all on the hill- 
tops to the never melting snows, a fossil shell or two. 
While scattered about the rounded entrance to the arbour 
lay bright pebbles, bright “everlasting” flowers, scraps 
of quartz, and what appeared to be flakes of a shining 
metal. 

The old man sighed, though he did not stop smiling, as 
he feasted himself on these simple artifices and awaited the 
appearance of the hidden designer. The hours of eternity 
are no longer than those of time. Contrariwise, a cen- 
tury of earth’s seasons may be in thought but as tran- 
sitory as the colours of a rainbow. But, whatever his 
ruminations might be, St. Dusman made no attempt to 
suppress the look of humorous compassion that now 
wrinkled his face at this showing of yet another renewed 
attempt to make a haven in the wilderness. 

He had not very long to wait. For sunbeams had but 
just gilded the fringe of the water in its cold rocky chan- 
nel, when there came a sudden scurry of wings from above 
his sheltering tree, and there alit on the very stone that 
had been his nocturnal stool, a bird. 

From claw to crest it reared itself about eighteen inches 
from its resting-place, and in plumage was of a uniform 
saddish green, though tinged at the extremities of its 
primaries and of its tail feathers with a dull cinnamon, its 
breast deepening to a faint shot purple towards the belly. 

With dipping and sidling head it surveyed the minute 


OF, 


The Connoisseur 


surrounding plateau, showing in its quick movements a 
faint unease as if its senses were dimly aware of strange 
and dangerous company. 

So translucent was the surrounding air that even at this 
distance the old man could mark the silvery rim to the iris 
of its eye, and could count the horned, outspread claws 
that clutched the stone. He had long since descried too, 
even to the delicate markings of its rosettes, the leopard 
apparently sleeping away its vigil on the height above. 

The bird that had thus alighted on the stone near-by, 
appeared to be in quest of company. It bowed and becked 
now a little this way, now a little that; it stretched and 
sleeked a wing until every speck on its neutral-patterned 
feathers displayed itself in the sun. Then crouching 
lower and amorously into its soft plumage, with stealthy 
movements it twisted its neck upon its shoulders until its 
beak, as if in maternal joy and quietude, lay gently upon 
its bosom. The old man smiled at the realisation that 
while this last gesture had come straight from nature’s 
teaching, what had preceded it seemed to have been 
learned by mimicry and to have been practised with re- 
luctance. 

A slight stir within the arbour now caught his attention. 
Instantly the visitor on the stone drew herself down and 
sped swiftly into cover behind and beneath the boulders 
that lay along the margin of the stream. Many minutes 
passed. The sun swept upward into the heavens, rejoic- 
ing in his strength. By infinite degrees the shadows cast 
by mountain peak and crest moved in a vast curve like 
the hands of an enormous timepiece. At faintest touch 
of their chill in its lair the leopard had stirred, lifted and 


98 


The Connoisseur 


stretched itself, and after one swift glance over the scene 
spread out beneath it, had vanished from sight, as if in 
obedience to a secret cue. 

And now from out the pitch-black arch of its nesting- 
place, issued into the blazing glare of the morning a crea- 
ture compared with whom the visitor to its domains was 
but as a handmaid in the train of the Queen of Sheba 
compared with King Solomon in all his glory. Its 
crested head was of molten gold—a gold which swam and 
rippled down towards its folded wings into a lively green 
seen only in rare mosses and in the shallows of the oceans. 
Green, blue, and purple then mingled their beauty. The 
wing tips were black as soot; the tail coverts, interrupted 
with snow, resembled them; while above them, arched 
over its back, flowed upwards two paler shafts terminat- 
ing in a lyre-shaped pattern of hues almost indistinguish- 
able the one from the other, as they glinted, flashed, and 
melted in the sun. 

This lordly creature, having surveyed a moment the 
surrounding day, trod delicately onwards to its bathing- 
place; and after a while returned once more to preen it- 
self amid the odd riches which it had collected and strown 
in devices recognisable only by itself, around its arbour. 
And not until now stole out again its humble infatuated 
visitor. 

The old man almost laughed outright to see the disdain 
with which his lordship refused to recognise his visitor’s 
presence there. Indolently, methodically he continued his 
exquisite toilet. While she, poor creature, as if now ut- 
terly ashamed of her former wiles, cowered half in 
shadow, half in sun, gently observing him. “O Lucifer, 


oY 


The Connoisseur 


Son of the Morning,’ muttered the old man—beads of 
sweat, in spite of the sheltering branches above him glis- 
tening on his bald pate, “O Lucifer, Son of the Morning, 
by pride fell the Angels.” 

Sheer curiosity seemed at last to overcome her as she 
drew a little nearer to watch the adored one rearrange his 
treasury. Now one shell, then another, a fragment of 
quartz or of glinting metal, he lifted with his beak and 
disposed in place. There appeared to be singularly little 
method in his peculiar hobby, for as often as not he re- 
turned to its former place in the pattern what but a mo- 
ment or two before he had with extreme deliberation de- 
posited elsewhere. Possibly some outlying province of 
his bird-like mind and attention was concerned with his 
faithful visitor. But not the faintest ripple of neck or 
plume betrayed it. His complete heed seemed to be solely 
for his pretty collection. 

“How strange it is,” thought the old man, “that even 
in the simplest of her creatures nature consistently en- 
deavours to reach the least bit farther than she can 
stretch.” There was something almost human in the queer 
devices these creatures of the same kin and kind were 
exhibiting, though neglect and contempt were steadily 
reducing the unwanted one to her own sovran and in- 
Sstinctive self. She rose out of the shadow, displayed 
once more an indolent wing, and emitted from her throat 
a curious, bubbling, guttural note. 

And apparently, as if at last in heed of her entreaties, 
her disdainful idol had suddenly thrust forward his golden 
head; every feather on his body seeming to bristle and 
roughen itself as he stared. Yet even this could be but 
small comfort to her meekness and vanity, for his silver- 
I0O 


The Connoisseur 


lined eyes were now fixed not upon herself but a few 
paces beyond her. 

There was a deathly pause. For an instant or two 
the small lovely universe around them, snow-masked 
mountain-top to brawling stream, seemed to have been 
swept up in a soundless swoon. Then, as if at a signal, 
three sentient objects flashed into movement, so rapid as 
to be individually indistinguishable. 

With a mighty whirr of wing, scattering with its talons 
as it rose the shells and pebbles strown around it, the 
Bird of the Arbour flashed into the air; and the crouch- 
ing leopard leapt towards its prey. 

Distracted an instant by the foe swooping to attack 
it, the beast swerved in its leap, missing by a few inches 
its assured victim, succeeding merely in tearing out a few 
dull feathers from her wing. She screamed piteously as 
she fled, then turned too late to observe what had befallen. 
Plunging with beak and claw, the master of the arbour had 
cowed for a moment her assailant. The leopard crouched 
snarling, with lashing tail, defending its eyes against 
plunging beak and claw. Then suddenly, and with one 
lightning buffet of its paws, it leapt into the air, and 
smote its aggressor down. 

St. Dusman drew his roughened hand over his fore- 
head; and seizing his staff issued out from his retreat 
towards the fray. If he had intended to intervene to any 
purpose in what was passing, he had come too late. After 
one glimpse of this advancing Strangeness, the leopard 
with cringing body turned swiftly and fled. 

The old man approached the wounded and dying bird, 
which feebly endeavoured to beat off his advances. He 
raised it gently in his arms, and carrying it back into the 

IOL 


The Connoisseur 


shadow of its arbour, laid it down among its treasures. 
The creature’s dimming eye gazed vacantly on these 
vanishing possessions. 

“Poor soul, poor soul,” the old man whispered. Then 
hastening down to the stream, he dipped the hem of his 
outer garment into the water and returning, squeezed out 
a few drops into its yawning bill. 

Strange changes of hue seemed to be chasing, like wind 
over wheat, across its miraculous plumage. Its glazing 
eye was fixed, hardly in terror now, but in mute hopeless 
entreaty, upon the old man’s face. 

“There, there, my dear,” he said, as if an old bachelor 
of a hundred generations had somehow learned to croon 
to a hurt child. “There, there, my dear; it’s only time 
to be whispering adieu again. The longer the journey 
the more numerous the inns. And perhaps a moment or 
two’s rest in each.” 

But as he watched its quickening pangs the old man 
suddenly rebuked himself for his stupidity in not re- 
minding himself that other comfort—tenderer than any 
human heart could offer—was near at hand. He lifted 
his eyes and searched the surrounding thickets. It was 
not yet too late. The carcass of the creature beneath his 
hands was not yet wholly insensitive. And having mois- 
tened once again the pointed tongue within its beak, the 
old man rose to his feet and shuffled off as quick as his 
old bones would allow, down into the ravine where 
brawled the mountain river. 

Nor while the morning hours lasted did he attempt to 
look behind him. He merely sat there lost in reverie. 

And since the tongues of the water kept up an inces- 
sant roar and babblement, no faintest murmur of the 
102 





The Connoisseur 


plaintive farewells behind him told whether, like the 
fabulous swan, the Bird of the Arbour sings only at the 
approach of death. 


KOOTOORA 


Even the keenest eye slowly and circumspectly direct- 
ing its gaze in as remote an ambience as it could command 
from any one of the blackened crests that lifted themselves 
fifteen to twenty feet, like the billows ofa frozen sea on 
this Plain of Kootoora, would have discerned no sign of 
life. Minute slender steel-coloured midges, it is true, 
their burnished wings like infinitesimal flakes of mica beat- 
ing the arid air, their horn-shaped snouts curved beneath 
their many-prismed eyes, drifted in multitudinous clus- 
ters in every hollow. They might be animate ashes. 

Specks even more minute circling at ethereal altitudes 
above the vast crater of distant Ajubajao betokened the 
haunt of some species of vulture, though what meat 
nourished them more substantial than the air in which 
they circuited there was nothing to show. 

Their towering vans commanded, however, an im- 
mense range of scene, and they long since must have 
descried from so dizzying a coign, a tiny erect shape 
scrambling toilsomely from out of the east towards the 
centre of this wild and hideous plateau. From crest to 
crest of the parched savanna of lava, now pausing to 
recover his breath and to survey what lay before him, now 
sliding and swaying into the yawning hollow beneath him ; 
clambering to his feet when some unnoticed obstacle or 
more dangerous glissade had sent him sprawling; he 
pushed steadily on. 

103 


The Connoisseur 


In his pertinacity, in the serene indomitableness of his 
age-raddled countenance he resembled no less a personage 
than the first Chinese patriarch, Bodhidharma, as— 
muffled in his mantle—he is depicted crossing the Yangtze 
river, his broad soles poised upon a reed. 

For this very reason, maybe, ‘the vultures of Ajubajao 
wheeled no nearer. Or it may be that a pilgrim or travel- 
ler who of his own free will, or at the promptings of a 
bizarre romance, or in service of some incalculable be- 
hest, dares the confines of a region as barren as this, 
quickly dissipates whatever pleasant juices his body may 
contain. Or it may be some inscrutable intuition in those 
carrion-fed brains had revealed that destiny had him in 
keeping beneath her brazen wing. Abject and futile crea- 
ture though he appeared to be, he came undeviatingly on. 

Its last filmy wreaths of sulphurous smoke had cen- 
turies before ceased to wreathe themselves from Ajuba- 
jao’s enormous womb. Leagues distant though its cone 
must be, its jagged outlines were sharply discernible, cut 
clean against that southern horizon. The skies shallowly 
arching the plain of lava that flowed out annularly from 
its base in enormous undulations, league on league until 
its margin lay etched and fretted against the eastern 
heavens—this low-hung firmament was now.of a green- 
ish pallor. In its midst the noonday’s sun burned ray- 
lessly like a sullen topaz set in jade. 

But utterly lifeless though the plain appeared to be, 
minute susurrations were occasionally audible, caused ap- 
parently by scatterings of lava dust lifted from their hol- 
lows on heated draughts of air. These gathering in 
volume, raised at last their multitudinous voices into a 
104 





The Connoisseur 


prolonged hiss, a sustained shrill sibilation as if the silken 
fringes of an enormous robe were being dragged gently 
across this ink-black Sahara. 

As they subsided once more, drifting softly to rest, a 
faint musical murmur followed their gigantic sigh, like 
that of far-distant drums and dulcimers from a secret 
and hidden borderland. Then this also ceased, and only 
the plaintive horns of the midges and the scurry of beetles 
scuttling beneath their shards to and fro in their haunts 
in the crevices of the lava broke the hush. 

In a deep angular hollow of the nearest of these lava 
dunes, lay basking a serpent, a flat of head and dull of 
eye, its slightly rufous skin mottled and barred in faint- 
est patternings of slate and chocolate. So still she lay, 
her markings might appear to be but the vein of an alien 
stone or metal imbedded in the lava. But now and again, 
at the dictate of some inward whim, her blunted tail 
arched itself an inch or two above the floor of its black 
chamber, emitting a hollow and sinister rattling—as if 
in admonishment or endearment of the brood of her 
young that lay drowsing in an apparently inextricable 
knot of paler colouring near-by. 

The hours of Kootoora’s morning glided on, revealing 
little change except an ever increasing torridity, until the 
thin air fairly danced in ecstasy—like an exquisitely 
tenuous gas boiling in a pot—above every heat-laved arch 
and hollow. The skies assumed a yet paler green, re- 
sembling that of verdigris, and deepening towards the 
north to a dull mulberry. Strange tremors now shook 
the air, and thicker-crusted though its skin might be than 
any leviathan, a sinister insecurity haunted the plain. 

105 


The Connoisseur 


Here took its walks that spectre, danger, but more appal- 
lingly bedizened than in any other region of the earth. 

Sluggish stirrings, the warning of some obscure in- 
stinct, in the serpent’s blood now quickened her restless- 
ness, though the lidless eyes set in that flat and obtuse 
head betrayed no glimmerings of intelligence or fear. 
She drew in closer to her brood, and again and yet again 
her rattle drummed sullenly in the heat. A sound alien 
from any experience that had ever been hers in these 
familiar haunts had broken the silence. It was the foot- 
step of approaching fear. 

Writhing swiftly beneath and towards the face of the 
lava incline, wherein a black splash marked the crannied 
entrance of her secret chamber, she swept aside the frag- 
ments of dried skin which she had sloughed in bygone 
years. An increasing movement in the lively tangle be- 
hind her showed that her last insistent summons had been 
heeded. One by one her restless younglings disentangled 
their coils from the general knot, and slid noiselessly into 
cover. But a few yet remained, semi-torpid, and, as her 
inscrutable wits warned her, in imminent danger beneath 
the glare of the sun, when suddenly the presence and 
influence of a human shape struck down across the lava 
wall; and the diffused purple shadow cast by the rayless 
sun lay over its hollow. 

The body that caused it was invisible to the serpent. 
But her rattle sounded unceasingly, as with groping coils 
she turned now this way, now that, in endeavour to repel 
this menace to her solitude and her young’s safety. Rear- 
ing herself at last in a blind fury of terror and anguish, 
with blunt head and flickering tongue she struck again 
106 





ae ee 


The Connoisseur 


and again not at the dreadful human gently surveying her 
. out of his smiling yet anguished face, as draggled, parched, 
and half-fainting he watched her every movement, but 
merely at the insensitive shadow that overhung her lair. 

The hollow desperate thumping of her slenderly boned 
head knocking its own knell grew fainter. But the last 
of her brood had made its way into safety before, bruised 
and bleeding, it drooped motionless in the dust. At this 
the old man scrambled down into the hollow. It had been 
an arduous journey for what might seem so trivial an 
errand, but there was no symptom of impatience in his 
gestures as, having moistened with spittle the ball of his 
thumb, he gently smeared the muzzle of his victim. 

Then he too bent his head, heedless of the still feebly 
flickering tongue, and seemed to be whispering into the 
creature’s sense some far-brought message of his own. 

And, yet again, from across the parched precipitous 
flanks of Ajubajao, moved, as it were, a vast suspiration 
of wind, sulphurously hot, of a dense suffocating odour, 
bestirring in its course the hovering multitudes of the 
midges, and driving before it a thin cloud of lava dust, 
as the wind drives shadow across the flats of a sea. Yet 
again that insidious whispering filled the quiet; and the 
remote dulcimers tattooed their decoy. 

The saint crouched low, hooding as best he could be- 
neath his mantle his eyes, mouth, and nostrils against the 
smothering skirring particles. A minute whirlpool of air 
came dancing like a host of dervishes into the she- 
serpent’s hollow. Lifting the dried scaly fragments of 
her discarded skin, it dispersed them here, there, every- 
where, in its minute headlong rout... 

107 


The Connoisseur 


PRINCE AHMAT NAIGUL 


The gloom of night lay over the dense forests that 
spread themselves like a pall over the face of the earth 
on either side of the high road—that immeasurable cause- 
way from north of the Great River for countless leagues 
to the sea. The skies above their motionless crests were 
fiery with stars. Immediately in front of the horsemen 
indeed, who were now rapidly approaching along the dim 
white benighted track on their many-days’ journey from 
the northern mountains to the Winter Palace that reared 
its walls and cupolas upon the precipitous banks of the 
river, stood (rivalling each the other) above the distant 
fret of trees, and but a few degrees apart, silver Venus 
and the flaming Dog-Star. 

The horsemen—the scarlet of their head-dresses and 
their cloaks scarcely discernible in this dense dusk—rode 
so far in advance of the cavalcade which was following 
after them that the dust they raised in passing had already 
floated to rest again before its leaders came into sight. 

Under a milk-cupped, leaf-tressed, umbrella-like tree 
at the edge of the curved dip which the gigantic highway 
made at this point in its course, owing to the waters of 
a brackish lake which stretched ‘itself out like a silver 
dragon in the uttermost glooms of the forest, sat a leper. 
Forbidden by law to show his shape in village or city, 
keeping his slender hold on life as best he could, he was 
a wanderer and a vagrant, dependent on the charity of 
chance wayfarers. Yet his marred face, glimmering 
faintly beneath this black canopy of boughs as if with a 
phosphorescence of its own was in spite of its hideousness 
benign with magnanimity and peace. His empty dish 
108 





The Connoisseur 


—formed out of the shell of an immense nut whose kind 
hung in huge clusters, like slumbering groups of monkeys, 
amid one of the forest trees near-by—lay empty beside 
him. He had composed his emaciated limbs in an attitude 
of contemplation. But his bleared eyes were now fixed 
on the torches and lanthorns of the approaching caval- 
cade, as its horsemen and broad-wheeled coaches came 
sweeping towards his screened retreat along the road. 

The skies were still and windless, sharing as it seemed 
awhile the quiet of boundless space. Even above the 
swelling tumult raised by the travellers in their journey, 
the leper marked the melancholy chantings of the night- 
birds in the branches above his head and in the thickets 
around him. Scared by scent and rumour of these hu- 
man invaders as they approached, the cowering beasts 
of the forest had long since retired into their further 
fastnesses, though the bolder of them paused to gaze 
stealthily out at the leashed hounds, the hooded hawks, 
the intent or sleeping faces of the convoy, and its living 
lovely treasure as it swept on its way. 

The crackling torch-flames and coloured lanthorns now 
flung meanwhile a brilliant and moving cloud of lu- 
minosity above the causeway; bridle, harness, lance, 
scabbard, and spur glittered amid the brilliant colourings 
of the throng. 

It was the prince Ahmat Naigul, returning with his 
bride after the feasting and festivities of their marriage- 
rites. Coach after coach, burdened with the grandees of 
his court and retinue, some gently slumbering as they re- 
clined on the low, shallow, cushioned seats within; others 
chattering and making merry, their eyes gleaming rest- 
lessly in the light flung into the dim recesses within their 


109 


The Connoisseur 


small wheeled houses from the torches of the horsemen 
that flanked each vehicle in turn; lumbered heavily by, 
grinding the powdered flint of the highway into dust yet 
finer. It seemed this living stream between these dark- 
ened walls would never cease. | 

None the less, there came an interval at last in its garish 
onset. Then yet another squadron followed after, their 
milk-white cloaks drawn back over the crimson and silver 
of their silken under-vests to the cruppers of long-maned 
horses of the colour of old ivory, their head-dresses sur- 
mounted with bejewelled plumes of stiff-spined feathers. 
They rode in silence, spear in hand, the personal body- 
guard of Prince Ahmat Naigul himself, whose coach, 
lightly swaying on its heavy springs and fashioned of 
datk wood, ivory and silver, now drew near, drawn by 
its eight ink-black Tartary draught-horses, their outland- 
ish outriders muffled to the eyes this summer evening in 
tippets of sable. 

The leper rose shivering to his feet, and muffling with 
his hand the deep-cut copper bell that swung suspended 
by a hempen cord about his middle, he advanced to the 
edge of the highway. 

And within the royal coach, her head at a gentle angle 
against its swan-white cushions, Ahmat Naigul’s princess 
lay asleep. About her brow was a green circlet of leaves 
of the everlasting Ooneetha tree. Her hair hung down 
on either side her quiet head in braided plaits, dangling 
upon her slender shoulders and thence upon the smooth 
inlaid feathers of the hooded cloak that enwrapped her, 
itself patterned in a linked soft loveliness after the fash- 
ion of the same tree. Her face resembled in its quietude 
and fairness the twilight of an evening in May, and she 
110 


The Connoisseur 


reclined in profound slumber, the orange doublet or cui- 
rass of the dark Prince beside her shining like still 
sheaves of flame against her snow. 

His eyes were fixed intently upon the gently moving 
darkness of the forest that skirted the high road, but 
ever and again his gaze returned to rest upon the dream- 
ing one beside him. And with bare hand holding his 
jewelled glove, he would, as it were, make to stroke the 
feathered folds of her cloak, and then, gently drawing it 
back, refrain, once more resuming his scrutiny of the 
vast silence that compassed them in. 

At that instant, the gently rocking coach in which he 
sat lurched slightly on its leathern springs as if the mettle- 
some horses that drew it had swerved at some unex- 
pected sight or sound. A challenging voice broke into 
the hush. The wheels slowly ceased to revolve; then 
came to rest in the dust. With a sharp turn of his head, 
the Prince stooped forward in the warm gloom of the 
carriage, and peered out of the window. Delicate shafts 
of light from the moon that every moment was riding 
higher into the vacancy of the sky, struck diagonally 
across, silvering the motionless wall of trees that bor- 
dered this bend of the high road. 

Full in this flooding radiance, shell in hand, his once 
white rags dingy and blotched, stood the leper, his matted — 
hair falling lank on either side his half-disfeatured face. 
The glass-clear pupils beneath the half-closed and fretted 
lids, were steady in their regard, and were fixed not on 
the Prince, not apparently on any single object within the 
shadow of the coach, but as if in contemplation far be- 
yond it. Nevertheless, the first clear glimpse of this 
whited wayside figure seemed to turn Ahmat Naigul’s 

III 


The Connoisseur 


body to stone. He desisted even from breathing, nor 
dared to glance behind him into the shadow, lest the eyes 
that had been so gently slumbering were now wide agape. 
And yet the terror that had suddenly assailed a heart at 
least as courageous as that of any beast that prowled the 
forests around him had sprung solely from instinct. Such 
dreadful shows of God’s providence as this mendicant 
were none too rare, even in a country magnanimously 
governed. 

A profound foreboding darkened his mind as in the 
twilight reflection of the dust and foliage of the wayside 
Prince Ahmat Naigul now turned to scrutinise his bride. 
Their lids lay gently on her rounded eyes, though above 
them the pencilled brows were lifted as if in a faint and 
delicious astonishment. <A rose-like flush had risen into 
her cheek; her lips were a moth’s wing apart. The 
feathered cloak—needled together of down from the 
plumage of the swans that haunt the still green creeks of 
the Great River—almost imperceptibly rose and fell above 
the quiet breast. No dream even, unless a dream of 
peace, haunted the spirit within. 

Stealthily as a serpent the Prince lifted himself to his 
feet and stepped down out of the carriage. A tense 
silence now lay over this loop of the great highway. All 
tongues had fallen still, and though curiosity had turned 
not one head by a hair’s-breadth in his direction, the 
complete cavalcade was arrested as if at a secret word of 
command. It might have been the assemblage of a dream. 

With a word to the horseman that now stood dis- 
mounted in the dust a little behind the royal coach, Prince 
Ahmat Naigul passed on, preceded by the leper, and at 
a few paces distant came to a pause and confronted him. 
112 


The Connoisseur 


The wolf of disease had all but gnawed away the nose. 
The cheek was sunken, the coarse hair hung limp and 
matted over the eroded ears. The hand that held the 
bowl to his breast shimmered as if it were inlaid with the 
scales of a fish, while the other grasped tight its copper 
bell as if with the talons of a bird. None the less, the 
glass-like eyes beneath their withering lids continued to 
gaze out as if in reverie. And not only humility, but an 
inward gentleness and peace, like that burthening the sails 
of an incoming ship in a squalid haven, shed their 
influences from this appalling shape. As in a lamp 
fashioned out of the coarsest horn, a gentle flame 
seemed to be burning from within the emaciated physi- 
ognomy. 

Amid the folds of Ahmat Naigul’s dimmed orange 
and scarlet, the jewels glowed softly in the moonlit at- 
mosphere. His narrow head was flung back a little as if 
his nostrils were in doubt of the air they breathed. 
Poverty, it has been recorded, is a gift of the Infinite. 
And the Prince made a slight obeisance as he drew a ring 
from his finger and advancing a pace nearer dropped it 
into the leper’s bowl. 

“A voice within,’ he muttered, “tells me that life is 
brief. I am prepared, Sorrowful One, and of your 
mercy would be thankful to follow at once.” 

The leper inclined his head a little towards the Prince, 
but his eyes remained unstirring. 

“How knowest thou,” the parched lips gasped, “how 
knowest thou the message has come for thee? Brief 
though the hour may be, it has its meed of minutes. 
Empty your mind of all but its most secret memories ; 
have you peace at last?” 


113 


‘The Connoisseur 


“Ts rest possible where happiness dwells?” returned 
Ahmat Naigul. 

“Only where rest is is happiness. Your journeyings 
have brought you here. Nor is it my bidding to call you 
yet away.” 

“Who then?” answered the thread-like voice, as the 
hand beneath the cloak groped upwards towards the dag- 
ger concealed beneath it. 

“T have your alms,” said the leper; “and now, if, as 
it seems, your highness’s will is to lead while others fol- 
low, our one and only need is that we exchange the kiss 
of peace.” 

And it seemed to the Prince as he stooped forward, 
resting his trembling hands upon the leper’s shrivelled 
shoulders, that the infinitely aged face beneath his eyes 
might be that of Death, so utterly serene it was. But no 
dreadful horror of mortal malady now showed itself. 
Even the holes, where nostrils as sweet with health as his 
should be, were now dark casements commanding a secret 
country ; and the narrowed eyes above them were as win- 
dows lit with such sunlight as springs reflected from un- 
trodden snows. And as if Ahmat Naigul had sipped of 
some potent syrup, consciousness lost count for one in- 
stant of eternity of time and space. Memories as of a 
myriad lifetimes swept pleasantly before his eyes. 

He drew back at last, and there broke upon his ear, 
loud as the clang of a temple gong, the clink of a horse- 
man’s silver bridle. And even yet the leper had not bent 
his eyes in his direction. Releasing his bell from his 
grasp and letting it swing soundlessly above the dust, the 
leper stooped, and having groped, hoarsely breathing, with 
his fingers in the dust, raised himself up once more and 


114 


The Connoisseur 


thrust out from his body his dried-up palm, at angles 
with his wrist, and almost as narrow as a monkey’s. 

Ahmat Naigul in turn outstretched his ungloved hand, 
from beneath his cloak, and the leper deposited in it an 
object so minute that the Prince had to press it firmly into 
the skin with his third finger lest he should lose it. 

“The seven ways remain,” said the leper. “And the 
easternmost is the way of life. My gift, Highness, is 
but for remembrance’s sake.” And without more ado 
this Saint of poverty swathed his miserable rags around 
his body, and turned back towards the blossoming tree 
where he had been resting his bones beside the waters of 
the lake. 

Ahmat Naigul remounted into his coach, and the horse- 
men swept on. Time passed unheeded while he sat bolt 
upright, finger still fixed to palm, his lips like ice above 
his gums, and his eyes dark with the fear that had clouded 
them. 

And with daybreak, the forest by the roadside now 
withdrew itself a little. Dark herbage scattered with 
flowers nodded its dews in the first rays of the sun, as the 
eyes of the gentle unstirring one beside him opened, to 
gaze once more at the companion of her journey; and 
her beauty was like a looking-glass to the beauty of the 
morning. 

“You have been gathering flowers,” she wid ; “and the 
narrow air herewithin is sweeter far than that of the 
country in which I have been wandering.” 

“And what country was that?” whispered the Prince. 

“TI dreamed,” she said, “that you were once a man, and 
a bird, and a serpent. And I dreamed, Ahmat Naigul, 
that you were once a scullion to the Sages of the Most 

II5 


The Connoisseur 


High. And that sometimes—forgive me, beloved—you 
sipped of their winecups when the veil of the entering-in 
had hidden you from their sight.” 

She drew a warm hand from beneath her feathers. 
“Why,” she said, touching his, “your lips are stained with 
it yet. They are like crimson threads upon a honey 
ground. And what have you there beneath your finger- 
tip?” 

She paused awhile. But Ahmat Naigul made no move- 
ment. “And what have you there beneath your finger- 
tip?” she questioned him again, a remote accent of dis- 
appointment lurking in her voice. 

“If, Princess, I had tasted the wine of that other sage 
whose glance none can resist, what would you say then?” 

“Silence is golden, beloved. I would do just like this.” 

And heedless of sunbeams, of strange eyes amid the 
thickets, of the birds wandering on their pathless ways 
from tree to tree, she bent upwards her fair face, and 
kissed Ahmat Naigul. 

But not until the Prince’s chief magician had toiled 
laboriously and for days together over his hoard of 
polished crystal was the Princess enabled at last to detect 
with clearness the speck that had lain so closely im- 
prisoned beneath the finger of his hand; and this even 
though the magician had succeeded in so adjusting his 
workmanship that it enlarged it almost to the magnitude 
of a grain of mustard-seed. 

So it was still by faith rather than by direct evidence 
of her gentle senses that she believed the frettings and 
mouldings on its infinitesimal surface resembled the fea- 
tures and hollows and fairnesses of a human face. And 
that, her own. . 

116 


Disillusioned 


HENEVER Dr. Lidgett’s visitor paused 

in his monologue, so serene seemed the 
p4| quiet in his consulting-room, so gently 
from its one high window rilled in the 
light, that these two strangers might have 
“J been closeted together in an oasis of ever- 
lasting peace. It was afternoon, and a scene of. stillest 
life. The polished writing-table with its worn maroon 
leather, the cabinet over the chimney-piece with its surgi- 
cal instruments and toy balances, the glass and gilt of 
the engraved portraits on the walls—everything in the 
room appeared to have sunken long ago into a reverie 
oceans deep. Even the faint fume of drugs on the air 
and the persistent tapping of water in a shallow basin 
behind the dark blue screen only intensified the quiet. 
They were nothing more than a gentle reminder that our 
human frailty sometimes requires an anesthetic, and that 
it is by moments life comes and goes. 

“But I see I am detaining you,” the small yet pene- 
trating voice began again out of the large leather-covered 
chair. “I shouldn’t have intruded at such a time.” The 
quick dark eyes under the bony hollows of the brows 
were fixed on Doctor Lidgett—as if he were a light- 
house looked at from a stormy sea. The face was pallid; 
the fingers twitched restlessly ; there was an air of vigilant 
intelligence on the features—as if the spirit of which 


117 





Disillusioned 


they were the mask had for some time been afraid of 
being frightened, and intent on realising it when real 
cause for fear came. 

Dr. Lidgett sat with his back to the window, his chair 
turned a little away from the table, his right leg crossed 
over his left, showing a neat, well-cut boot. He re- 
mained perfectly still, his eyes downcast, his well-kept 
hands resting a little heavily on the arms of his chair. 
His attitude suggested indeed that to listen like this to 
what this untimely stranger was saying, and as heedfully 
and as sympathetically as possible, was, if anything, pre- 
ferable, perhaps, to listening to nothing, to being alone. 

“Not at all,” he murmured reassuringly, glancing up 
at his visitor, “please be quite comfortable about that, 
and go on with what you were telling me. As I say, 
this is not my usual consulting hour; and as a matter of 
fact my partner, Dr. Herbert Scott, is attending to my 
patients for the next few days. You would find him this 
evening at Drayton House—No. 110—a little further 
down the hill. But don’t let that concern you now. You 
were complaining of physical lassitude, general malaise?” 

His voice was low and unanimated, but he pronounced 
his words with precision, his rather full red lips moving 
beneath his square-cut beard. The eyes of the two of 
them met for an instant, and the doctor looked away. 

“It’s exceedingly kind of you,” his visitor demurred. 
““And—well, that is really my trouble. But, as I was 
saying, it’s not exactly physical. Indeed,’ he added, as 
if in disappointment that there should be so little to tell, 
“there appears to be precious little actually wrong with 
me; nothing much more, I mean, than what is usual in 
these days and at my age, I suppose. It is merely this 
118 


Disillusioned 


detestable listlessness of mind; this loss of mental ap- 
petite. And I had a wonderful digestion once!’ He 
smiled at this wintry ghost of a joke. “The fact is I 
can’t regain my grip on things. It is as though what- 
ever I do or think or say—or feel for that matter— 
serves no purpose, is no manner of use—to myself, I 
mean. And yet, my friends talk to me much as usual. 
Nobody seems to have noticed anything wrong. They 
haven’t said so. But then we don’t, do we? I wonder 
at times, doctor, if it is not because we daren’t. There 
must be many of us, surely, in much the same galére? 

“T am, as I say, a writer, an author by profession. I 
scribble a good deal for the magazines, fiction chiefly.” 
The dark eyebrows raised themselves above the intently 
dark and smallish eyes. “As a matter of fact my name 
is Pritchard,” he explained. “You may just possibly 
have come across it somewhere.” 

“T know the name,” said Dr. Lidgett discreetly, “but 
I could not perhaps definitely connect it with anything I 
have actually read. But then I have little time for read- 
ing.” 

“No, no, no, of course not,” his visitor hastened to re- 
assure him. “I didn’t mean that; it was only that nowa- 
days we can hardly help to some extent taking in one an- 
other’s washing, so to speak. On the other hand of 
course, fiction is read almost solely by women—a sort of 
stimulant, perhaps. I mentioned it merely because, I 
suppose, one’s occupation counts. Not that I claim, thank 
heaven, to be a victim of the artistic temperament; as a 
matter of fact I’m not up to that standard. Far from 
it.’ He smiled again, looking the while more haggard 
and lifeless than ever. 


119 


Disillusioned 


“But that’s how I stand. What I mean is this—that, 
so far as I know, lungs, heart, liver, and all that are 
sound enough—as sound at least as one would expect at 
my age. I was.examined not so very long ago either. 
It’s rather my mind, my nerves, you know. Not that 
there is anything definitely, organically wrong with my 
mind either, I hope. At least I hope not.” He smiled 
—a smile almost lustrous in its intensity. “Not at least 
in the usual meaning of the word.” 

Dr. Lidgett gazed steadily at this naive yet receptive 
and highly animated face. He too smiled, but as if at 
such moments it was customary to do so. “It is ex- 
ceedingly unlikely,” he agreed, “that you would have 
come to me if that had been the case. Not at all. Were 
you recommended to see me—personally ?” 

“No, oh no. I haven’t even that excuse. I was pass- 
ing; I was walking along the street, not going anywhere 
in particular of course; and I caught sight of the plate 
and the lamp. One is foolish perhaps to obey these 
vague impulses. It isn’t quite fair. But . . . Somehow 
it seemed, there’s your chance. I read the names—as 
I say—and my only fear was that this might be Dr. 
Scott’s. I wanted to see you, Dr. Lidgett: I don’t know 
why. But there, I am only worsening my case,’ he 
Stirred in his chair, groped for his hat, “I see I am de- 
taining you. Let me come again another time.” 

If Dr. Lidgett felt any impatience with so hesitant a 
visitor, his sober unmoving countenance showed not a 
trace of it. “Please go on: J am anxious to hear,” he 
said, though his words sounded as if they were more 
unwilling than usual to come at the moment’s call. “Tell 
me precisely what these mental or nervous symptoms are. 
120 





Disillusioned 
Is your memory fairly good for example—names, dates, 
words and so on? Do you find it difficult to fix your 
attention—to concentrate? Have you any worry? Is 
there any particular thing continually on your mind? 
Are your thoughts interrupted, I mean, as if without 
cause ?” 

“IT don’t hear voices, or anything of that kind,” said 
his visitor. “‘No more, I mean, than one should in doing 
my particular kind of work. My memory is remarkably 
good—for what I need. And I can concentrate on what 
I really want to do. What more do I ask?” 

The blank face with which he put this question re- 
sembled Grimaldi’s at his most melancholy ; it was at the 
same time so empty, so forlorn and so ineffectual. 
“Literally nothing, doctor, except to say that there is no 
purpose in what I do. It is lifeless, inert; the bottom’s 
knocked out of it. No use at all; except, of course, for 
what it brings in—the merely practical side of it.” 

“Have you—any family?” inquired the doctor. In- 
deed he almost blurted the question in his quiet fashion, 
as if it were one not entirely to his liking, too intrusive 
and personal. 

“None whatever,” was the reply. Mr. Pritchard in 
fact looked slightly astonished at being asked anything 
so commonplace, as if he had been unexpectedly presented 
with an aspect of life which he had never paused to con- 
sider. “I live with my mother,” he said. “She is an 
old lady now. Hale still, but a little deaf, and apt to 
repeat herself. We spend a great deal of time together. 
But lately she has not been so well as I could wish. Have 
you ever repeated that phrase—‘failing health’—over to 
yourself? Tennyson, you know, used to say under his 

121 


Disillusioned 


breath ‘Alfred, Alfred, Alfred’ until he became like a 
shell with the wind in it—empty. But I say instead, ‘In 
failing health—in failing health—in failing health’— 
the meaning intensifies, doctor, the longer you brood on 
it. But that of course is not what you were asking. Be- 
sides, I doubt if any kind of responsibility—wife and 
children and so on—that kind of thing—would make much 
difference. JI haven’t noticed it in other men. It might 
even complicate matters, mightn’t it?’ But Dr. Lidgett, 
on his side, appeared not to have considered this problem ; 
and his visitor pressed on. 

“To tell you the honest truth,” he said, “I have come to 
the end of things. For me, the spirit, the meaning—what- 
ever you like to call it—has vanished, gone clean out of 
the world, out of what we call reality. At least for me. 
It’s nothing but a husk; and a dried-up husk at that. 
It may sound pompous and affected, but, try as I may, 
I can no longer see any purpose in it all, even if I ever 
did. You may retort,” he interrupted himself eagerly 
—‘‘you may retort: ‘But, then, who does?’ But then, 
you see, there is all the difference between not seeing a 
purpose in life because you haven’t looked for one; and 
being sure there is no purpose when you have. 

“Besides, what right have we to assume there is a pur- 
pose? What justification? The palaver! I remember 
not many months ago—I had been in bed for a few days 
with a chill—I woke up one afternoon and found my 
eyes fixed on the window—autumn trees, a quiet blue 
sky, a few late swallows, twilight coming: and at that 
moment as if in divination I knew there was no purpose. 
I wanted nothing; so there was nothing to want... . 
122 


Disillusioned 


A tale told ny an idiot—signifying nothing. What if 
Shakespeare himself meant that?” 

Dr. Lidgett glanced covertly away from his visitor. 
Nobody could have gathered from his quiet solemn eyes 
if he considered even Shakespearean convictions of final 
validity, or even if he needed any evidence in the matter. 
Their expression was absent and yet mournful, as if they 
were fixed on the ghost or spectre of some happy memory 
never to be retrieved, never to bloom again. 

“It’s difficult to explain these things,” his visitor was 
chattering on, almost vivaciously. “But I wrote a bit of 
a story once, with something of that idea at the back of 
it—the changing points of view, I mean. It was about 
a man who buys a pair of spectacles—goggles—greenish 
glass, copper handles—at a shop tucked away under a 
row of lime-trees in a little cathedral town. Three steps 
down; very still and musty-fusty; owl in a glass case; 
antiques, all sorts; and a funny old shop-keeper with a 
goatee beard. That kind of thing. He asks the peering 
old creature if he has any glasses to shield his eyes from 
the glare outside. The thing’s symbolic, of course. And 
when the customer goes out of the shop and puts them 
on, everything in the world is changed.” Up went Mr. 
Pritchard’s black eyebrows once more as if in the wildest 
astonishment at such an original idea: though apparently 
he was only waiting for a word of encouragement. 

“Changed?” Dr. Lidgett enquired. “For the worse?” 

“Oh no, the better! The other, surely, would be rather 
too much of a problem! I couldn’t tackle that.” 

“T fancied,” the doctor patiently replied, “you meant 
that the man who buys the spectacles was—well .. .” 

123 


Disillusioned 


“No, no, quite the reverse,” the visitor ejaculated 
eagerly. “He puts them on in the street. And presto! 
his whole world is transmogrified. Grand transforma- 
tion scene: everything around him becomes instantly 
irradiated with beauty and life and meaning—all that; 
dancing with happiness and light. Even the shop is an 
Ali Baba’s cavern: and the trees outside spread their 
boughs over him like green tents of enchantment, sighing 
with mystery and delight. The people in the street— 
creatures from another planet: Traherne, of course: all 
colours and beautiful forms intensified. They walk as if 
they had wings—head, shoulder, thigh, like the angels in 
Isaiah: Each one had six wings; with twain he covered 
his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with 
twain he did fly:—just as if the fellow had been taking 
haschisch or something. He sees a woman with a bas- 
ket—going shopping: she is fair as Israfel, wondrous 
as manna, shining—Botticelli. The buildings are mar- 
vellously transmuted, too. Even little common things 
changed: the dust, the cobwebs, the refuse, the manure 
in the streets, a sandy cat on a window-sill, the sparrows, 
a thrush in a cage, singing—‘in the silence of morning the 
song of the bird.’ 

“And he goes into the cathedral, in which only the 
day before he had yawned his way from tomb to tomb, 
to find it a shrine drenched with loveliness; as if some 
incomparable artist had spent centuries in cutting the 
stones, and as if the stones themselves had been quarried 
from some celestial quarry. There is a faint exquisite 
blue in the air. He can even hear, like a network of 
faintly shimmering strings, all the music, the Marbecke 
and Palestrina, the Bach and the Beethoven and the Pur- 
124 


Disillusioned 


cell and so on, that had floated up and into silence and 
rest into the fretted roof century after century. I over- 
did it a little perhaps. You can’t help yourself. But 
that’s how it ran. The spectacles, too, I agree, were a 
bit mechanical; but then for my part I could never quite 
stomach the physic trick in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 
But that’s how it came; and the story was published all 
right. In fact I had one or two letters about it. People 
are very odd.” 

Dr. Lidgett had watched his patient steadily through 
this monologue—his alert gestures, his mobile features, 
his shining eyes. At this pause he recrossed his legs, 
closed his eyes very gently—much as a lion blinks at 
sight of a two-legged visitor looking at him through the 
bars of his cage. 

“It’s a story which I should think children particularly 
would delight in,” he remarked courteously, but with his 
usual reserve. “I should like to have read it. How did 
it end?” 

He made the question sound as free from mere civility 
as possible, but could not restrain the faint sigh which 
these last few days had been the completion of every 
other breath he breathed. 

“Oh the end?” echoed Mr. Pa itieea a little dejectedly. 
“That is always the difficulty. He begins to preach at 
the street corner and is shut up for a lunatic and they 
take his spectacles away and—and so on. It was only a 
tale. But you see my meaning. The curious thing is 
that that is what we all say about another world. We 
are haunted by this hope, even this divination of another 
state or condition of being-that is beyond our mortal 
senses to realise. A place or condition where—well, after 

125 


Disillusioned 


death, of course. And yet, I feel, if we are not capable 
of it here and now, how is the transition to be made? 
Where shall we find the spectacles? There are some 
people, of course, who seem never to have needed them 
—they are peace and happiness. But...” 

He gazed at the doctor as if he were really and truly 
in need of enlightenment, and as if even possibly it might 
be included in the fee. “Well, for most of us—we don’t 
come across wonder-working opticians under every lime- 
tree in every cathedral town. And supposing, as you 
suggested, the magic power of the spectacles had been 
reversed. What scene then would have met our friend’s 
eyes! 

“All I mean is, don’t we all have to put up with what 
we ourselves, each one of us, can get? And the ten- 
dency I remember another tale I read once, by a 
French writer—at least the name was French. A transla- 
tion, I think. It was about a philosophical crank whose 
lifelong hobby had been to transmute knowledge, just as 
the old philosophers tried to transmute metals. Or rather 
to focus knowledge so that it became an intrinsic part of 
himself—as of course all true knowledge is to some extent ; 
a genuine ‘common sense’ to the n’th degree; a power of 
vision ; almost, as one might say, another dimension. He 
sees things first through one aspect of knowledge and 
then through another in rapid succession, and realise, 
through a fleeting eternity of change reality’s everlasting 
nothingness or somethingness, whichever way you like 
to put it.” Mr. Pritchard smiled. “In the end, he decided 
that he would have been a wiser and happier man if he had 
remained content with his own small natural instincts. 
He gave the game up—though that perhaps hardly sounds 
126 





Disillusioned 


French. I have muddled the story, but that was the 
gist.” 

The doctor nodded, as if in encouragement; but even 
an unobservant visitor could hardly have helped noticing 
that his attention and interest had begun to wane, had 
begun to resume their own natural channel. He had sunk 
a little lower into his chair, and a faint cloud of ennui or 
abstraction had settled on his features. 

Mr. Pritchard sighed. “I don’t mean, doctor, that that 
iS in any sense my experience. Far from it. It’s be- 
yond me!” The animation died out of the pallid face. 
The wide forehead resumed its customary frown. The 
little black eyes fixed themselves on the pattern of the 
surgery carpet. “All my knowledge only adds to the 
burden, the realisation how helpless I am to contend 
against this settled conviction of my general uselessness 
and ineffectiveness. I realise, too, that it is only my 
knowledge, and that that being so, how am I to know 
that it has any true relation to—any bearing whatsoever 
—on the facts, on the reality? Please don’t suppose that 
I am pretending to be an expert in anything. I have 
scarcely more than dabbled in subjects outside my own 
particular bent. But speaking of the little I have learned 
and read, works of science and so on, and taking it for 
granted that even the novice, the mere man in the street, 
is free to come to his own conclusions, however partial 
and inadequate they are bound to be, it seems to me that 
all that too is nothing more than a general kind of human 
make-believe. It is merely what they—the experts— 
think, not regarding what really matters to the very self 
within but only outside material things. 

“They work away—self-denyingly and modestly, too, 

27, 


Disillusioned 


for the most part—with their little scales and their in- 
struments, their little scalpels and acids and batteries and 
retorts and all that paraphernalia. But whatever the re- 
sult, however amusing and serviceable aud ingenious, we 
all know that such evidence is only the secretion or excre- 
tion of their own senses. Senses that can tell us only 
what they are capable of being sensible of. 

“And look at it! What—I ask you—is the instant’s 
good of this enormous machine we call life—this tread- 
mill, the moment you question whether there is any value 
or truth or purpose or what-not in what it grinds? Look 
at their chemistry—the beautiful water-tight jargon of 
it all. Look at their astronomy: their red star this 
and their green star that, and the waste of space and 
the curve to it, and their spectral analyses and their 
orbits, and their rules of thumb and their mileage—their 
mileage! As if, doctor, my being two or three yards 
from you now is a fact of the slightest spiritual impor- 
tance! In itself, I mean.” 

The doctor quietly eyeing his visitor, nodded once 
more. But even yet—though the faintest, dying spark of 
animation, even of remote amusement, had kindled in 
his quiet blue eye, it was hardly as though he took more 
than a merely courteous and friendly interest in what, 
with so much zest and conviction, his patient was saying. 
But that patient, as alert as any practised prima-donna or 
conjurer in “sensing” the responsiveness of an audience, 
had noticed this tiny ray of encouragement, and at once 
pressed forward. 

“I went out last night: I went out into my garden. 
It’s little more than a square green patch of grass, with 
a few old trees, an acacia and so on, but pleasant 
128 


Disillusioned 


and secluded, and not much overlooked. We make a 
point of that, oddly enough: not to be overlooked! As 
if It has a nice old wall, too—a fragment of flotsam 
left by the country when it receded from the filthy flood 
of London. And I looked up into what they call the 
starry void of space; splinters of light: Aldebaran, the 
rainy Hyades, the clusters, the nebulea—of the Pleiads, 
Orion and the rest—annular, elliptic, spiral; you know 
the delightful jargon. And then the Milky Way—the 
Milky Way! And Venus there in the west, the goddess 
of Roman love. And now and then, a gentle, soundless, 
silver curve of dying light—some meteor candling its 
way into oblivion. I agree you might call it solemn, 
beautiful, entrancing; significant, even, if you happened 
to be a young couple just fallen in love. But—for you 
and me, doctor! I looked, and my imagination simply 
refused to respond. The spectacle was there, punctual, 
brilliant, according to specification—but honestly this 
particular programme-seller was unable to applaud. It 
was like strumming on a dumb piano—a fake piano. It 
meant no more to me than a piece of paper over which 
some idiot in a moment of ill-temper has flicked a 
fountain-pen. Reverse the colour-scheme: make the sky 
silvery-white and the stars black dots. What interpreta- 
tion should we put upon it then? Something sombre 
and profound and meaningful, not a doubt of it: and 
with as much and as little justification. The constella- 
tions: a child’s scrawls! Doggerel! 





“The Goat to Vesta we allot; 
Juno prefers the Water-pot; 
And Neptune has his Fishes got. 
129 


Disillusioned 


“Oh yes, amusing, romantic enough, if you’re that way 
inclined. And I’m saying nothing against it for those 
who still happily are tinder to every scientific spark. 
But’”—he shifted wearily in his luxurious chair—“well, 
I went back into the house. As usual my old mother was 
sitting by the fire, stooped up together in her easy chair 
in her silk shawl—one of those ugly old Victorian horse- 
hair chairs, made for endurance. And I thought sud- 
denly what a long time it had taken to make her old 
like that. I thought of what she had gone through— 
I’m not her only child—to come out there, like that. I 
thought I might perhaps have to survive her and grow 
old too—and only strangers to look after me. She was 
knitting. I don’t know what she was knitting; but her 
hands are crooked now, and getting clumsy with her 
needles. 

“T bawled, ‘It’s a fine starry night, mother.’ 

“She said, ‘Eh, Charles?’ 

“T repeated the observation. She said she was glad 
it was fine. She is an old lady now. Very rarely goes 
out, you know; so weather hardly matters to her sitting 
cooped up indoors by the hearth. And upon my word, 
doctor, as I looked at her—my own mother—I seemed 
to see Death himself hooped together there in that chair 
huddling close down to the fire It was as if the old 
villain had taken to the device to pass away the time in 
his old age!—knitting together a winding-sheet for the 
whole human race; for this complete ridiculous universe. 
Yet even as I thought that, it seemed I should be suffo- 
cated with remorse—the odiousness of such a feeling 
about her! But no. She wasn’t to blame. We under- 
stand one another: mother and son. There’s no need of 
130 


Disillusioned 


any sense of proportion in that. One’s heart almost 
breaks at the thought of its own impotence to express, 
and to comfort, and to tell. . . . Those awful souls one 
sees in the streets! Awful. Good Lord, doctor, this 
whole stellar universe of ours may be no more than the 
bubbles in a bottle of champagne—or soda-water! And 
we humans the restless maggots in a rotting excretion of 
the sun. And yet—we go on breeding!” 

The doctor drew his hand gently down over his beard. 
He coughed softly, glancing sidelong at his eloquent pa- 
tient. “Am I to understand,” he said, “that you actually 
saw a physical change in your mother—I mean, that it 
amounted to anything in the nature of an hallucination?” 

“That’s just it,’ said his visitor suddenly angling him- 
self up in his chair as if some one had pulled the appro- 
priate wire; “that’s just it. I did so see it: but only, of 
course, with my inward eye. It was so because I saw it 
so: but I’m not pressing it as scientific evidence. No, 
doctor, I can manage the hallucinations all right, when- 
ever I want to; and without trespassing too far over the 
edge. In fact I should of course be a pretty poor scrib- 
bler of fiction—worse even than I am—if I couldn’t.” 

“But they don’t persist?” persisted the doctor. 

Once more Mr. Pritchard’s features seemed to collect 
themselves together into a point of intense vacuity; and 
Dr. Lidgett looked away again. Beyond the surgery 
window was a patch of red-brick wall on which a young 
fruit-tree had been espaliered. It was in scanty leaf now, 
but though its flowers came punctually to the season, its 
fruit never ripened, for only the beams of a north-west 
sun ever peeped into this corner of the doctor’s garden. 
His glance having wandered away from the occupant of 

131 


Disillusioned 


his chair rested heavily on its vivid green. This valiant 
little plum-tree was an old friend of his. He had watched 
its miracle of revivification recur year after year: had 
noticed it while he had sat interviewing his patients one 
after the other, doing his best for them in his own solemn 
fashion before eagerly returning to that new life of his 
upstairs. And realising that it was never likely to bear, 
he would go out in the evening and pluck a sprig or two 
of its blossom to bring in for a surprise. It showed 
greener than ever this particular spring, as if it had taken 
on an unprecedented verdure, had made the friendliest 
of efforts, for a particular occasion. And one could 
hardly blame it if the occasion had suddenly perished, 
or refused to keep its tryst. 

His visitor, having shaken himself free of a momentary 
absent-mindedness, had followed the direction of the doc- 
tor’s eyes, and himself gazed a moment at the leafing 
plum. 

“Tt’s a curious thing,” he said, “but my mind—what 
they call the subconscious, I suppose—seems for some 
little time past to have been exploring in the very direc- 
tion of the state into which I have been gradually re- 
duced. One might almost suppose, I mean, that things 
and events of the outside world are only mere properties 
in the inward scene—farce or melodrama—in which one 
is the only unquestionably living actor. Not that I am 
by profession a solipsist! That little tree, there, reminds 
‘me, for example, of yet another piece of fiction I managed 
to write a few months ago. I know I am boring you 
with all this stuff, Dr. Lidgett; but it’s only because it 
seems to me to be symptomatic so to speak; and I sup- 
132 





Disillusioned 


pose even the smallest particular may be of service in 
arriving at a diagnosis.” 

The doctor turned back his head again, shifted his el- 
bows on the arms of the chair, leaned his chin on his 
fingers, and once more out of his calm settled eyes pa- 
tiently surveyed his visitor. “Certainly,” he said. “We 
usually, you know, have to extract these things for our- 
selves. It is a help to have them volunteered. What is 
this other story you were referring to?” 

“Why’’—once more Mr. Pritchard’s pallid face lit up 
with inward animation and the gesticulations of his small 
long-fingered hands helped him out—“why, in this story, 
it is Nature herself that dries up. Very gradually, of 
course. At first, indeed, almost imperceptibly. For a 
succession of autumns the harvests are slightly but cu- 
mulatively less abundant; now in this country, now in 
that. But steadily and incessantly the general average 
begins to dwindle all over the world. Then, here and 
there the deficit becomes acute. At first it is only the 
important—humanly important things, I mean—cereals, 
sugar, hops, vines, tea, coffee, and so on, that are notice- 
ably deficient—the irony being that less vital though im- 
portant things flourish. Rubber, cotton, hemp, for ex- 
ample, continue steady. And new gold and diamond 
mines are actually discovered. There is a positive ple- 
thora of coal and petroleum. Transportation from one 
scene of growing desolation to another therefore remains 
easy. 

“And then, doctor, the creeping shadow! First the 
cautious experts, the statisticians, the exchanges, the 
markets, and then on and on in ever widening circles 

133 


Disillusioned 


of misgiving and panic. And ever more widely the 
rumour spreads. The merest patch of countryside re- 
reveals the secret at last—one glance at the straggling 
thinning fields, the wilting hedges, the famished cattle, 
the naked soil, gaping and grinning through the green— 
growing bald! And so the pinch grows steadily sharper 
until the world at large—at least the civilised part of it 
—begins to realise what it is really in for. There is an 
orgy of crises: changes of Government: International 
Conferences: ever more and more impotent and ineffec- 
tual. And then at last the newspapers fall on the scare 
like bluebottles on carrion. 

“And the following spring the full realisation comes. 
Things of age-long standing—the forests, the trees, the 
prairies and savannas—falter, pine, dwindle, fade, perish. 
And Man realises his final destiny. Even his beloved 
and trusty law of averages has gone to the deuce, and his 
just and equable old grandmother Nature is obviously 
playing the jilt. I can tell you this, doctor, the upshot of 
that little situation was a good deal worse than the Eu- 
ropean war. Society, of course, simply falls to pieces. 
Starvation; mobs; rioting; religious frenzies; fanatics; 
communities of suicide. You can imagine a starving 
Europe—we have caught glimpses of a starving Asia. 
And in trouble like that the taking of sides is of com- 
paratively little account. Even an imaginary situation 
such as that refreshes such desiccated old problems as, 
What do we human beings really believe in? and, Exactly 
how much do we value posterity? For my part—pro- 
vided that nature kept things going just for zsthetic rea- 
sons, I cannot honestly see that it would be altogether a 
calamity if humanity did give up the ghost, or at any 


134 


ee eae ee eee ee a - 


Disillusioned 


rate, if a very large proportion of our superabundant 
populations did. J am ready.” 

The doctor spoke muffledly—through his fingers. “The 
birth-rate is, I believe, actually falling in most European 
countries. And naturally there are many economists and 
eugenists who rejoice at it. You have a vivid fancy, Mr. 
Pritchard, if I may venture to say so. But we may hope 
things won’t reach such an extreme as that.” 

His visitor smiled; candidly, almost eagerly. “Per- 
haps not; and of course you are right about the birth- 
rate. But the death-rate’s going down too—and so the 
tide is kept in genial flood. Isn’t that so?” 

But Dr. Lidgett seemed to have as suddenly lost in- 
terest in the question as he had found it. He shut his 
mouth, unclenched his fingers, looked away. And once 
more the dark quick face opposite him also lost life and 
expression. Mr. Pritchard indeed was stifling the rudi- 
ments of a yawn. 

“Well, that was the story. A mere shocker, of course. 
It sold well, too. But I agree Nature has as yet ignored 
my hint.” He looked about him, as if in search of some- 
thing lost long ago, as if searching had become little more 
than an automatic reaction. He appeared to be a little 
uneasy too, as if his conscience were at last chiding him 
for taking an advantage so extreme of a _ fellow- 
professional who merely happened to be at a loose end, 
and, kindly and tolerant enough to listen to him. 

“But quite seriously, doctor,’ he began again apol- 
ogetically, “why are some of us singled out to realise the 
appalling trap we are all in? How many of us, do you 
suppose, do realise it: have the courage or the fatuity 
to face the question? And, as for the rest, what is the 


135 


Disillusioned 


impulse, the impetus that keeps them going? Deceives 
them, if you like, but still keeps them going? Are we 
really to acknowledge that it is a purely physical thing? 
This fountain of life that keeps green our philosophical 
fallacies, keeps green our delight in things, our interest 
in our fellow-creatures, our faith in Hope, or, at any rate, 
in a decent courage, even though there is not the slightest 
logical justification for it—is it really and indeed nothing 
but a sort of physical well-being? If it’s merely that, 
then I suppose treatment might put it right, Dr. Lidgett? 
Treatment, at any rate, could prevent my concerning my- 
self with it any longer. Say a fraction of a grain of 
prussic acid. But if it’s mental, of the soul, well, my 
God, I shall keep a very silent tongue in my head when 
talking to anybody else than a man of your profession! 
On the other hand, if it 1s mental, why, somehow I feel 
I ought to try to fight it out. What do you suggest?” 

Dr. Lidgett having so long and so patiently (and so un- 
enterprisingly) waited for this opportunity, asked his 
visitor a few sedate, common-place questions concerning 
his actual health: his appetite, the hours he kept, how 
much he smoked, how badly he slept. But then, he had 
nothing else to do this long spring afternoon, nothing 
whatever except to look through a few bundles of dis- 
carded letters, to write a cheque or two, one in payment 
of a nominal fee to a specialist on cancer, another for 
services rendered by yet another kind of specialist—and 
then to leave his vacant, his incredibly vacant house, and 
to go away for a few days. He had indeed already once 
or twice during his visitor’s jerky conversation seen him- 
self pacing the deserted but “bracing” esplanade of a 
small southern watering-place. This untimely creature 
136 





Disillusioned 


would not detain him much longer. Besides, he was him- 
self by nature and habit cautious and thorough. He sub- 
mitted his patient to a close and exhaustive examination ; 
heart, lungs, stomach, knee jerk and the rest. Then he 
once more resumed his seat and looked out of the window. 

Having no looking-glass handy, Mr. Pritchard was 
now apparently taking particular care over the adjust- 
ment of his collar and tie, though the sidelong twist of 
his head at the moment suggested that of a bird past all 
care on a poulterer’s hook. But his eyes meanwhile were 
busily exploring the neat efficient furnishings of Dr. Lid- 
gett’s consulting-room. From object to object they 
darted, bright as fireflies on a summer’s evening. They 
had become by long practice the willing servants of his 
craving for “local colour.” It was a habit that would no 
doubt persist even when only a few minutes remained 
to him of his earthly existence. Indeed, though he must 
be even in an unusual degree the conscious centre of his 
own small universe, he was profoundly interested in his 
fellow-creatures—their absurd little ways and habits and 
eccentricities. Nothing human shocked or failed to con- 
cern him, except possibly most of his fellow-authors’ 
fiction. 

On the other hand, though his eyes and senses were 
at this moment as active as ever, his thoughts were other- 
wise engaged. Since it could lead to nothing, he was 
upbraiding himself again for giving all this trouble to the 
quiet sedate figure seated in the chair over there. He 
looked a good sort, if ever there was one—probably in- 
tensely kind to his poorer patients, even his panel pa- 
tients, though, as probably, quite unable to appreciate 
what he himself had been saying, even if he had con- 


137 


Disillusioned 


sidered it worthy of attention. A general practitioner 
must often have to make allowances for patients that 
appear to them to be little better than freaks; women 
especially—with nerves rather than minds to pester them. 

He had taken a liking to Dr. Lidgett; he liked that 
placid, cautious manner—the reserve of the man. What 
kind of inward life did he lead, he wondered. What 
kind of home life? “Have you—er—any family ?”— 
the doctor’s question recurred to him so amusingly that 
it brought the ghost of a smile into his mind. It must 
be an odd thing to spend one’s days tinkering about with 
deranged human machines—deranged simply because the 
silly fool of an engineer has neglected or overworked 
them. On the other hand, the mere human norm must 
be as uninteresting as it is probably unprofitable. What 
“family doctors” wanted were patients with plenty of 
money and small recurrent ailments. For his own par- 
ticular purpose he himself preferred the human machine 
that was not running as smoothly as one of those ghastly 
electric dynamos with the huge buzzing fly-wheel. So 
much fuel; so much energy: so much lubricating oil; so 
much pressure to the square inch. Was it even pos- 
sible to be fully and vividly conscious and physically 
sound and normal at the same time? 

Apart too from the thoughts in Mr. Pritchard’s mind, 
dizzying themselves like wasps fluttering round a honey- 
pot, there lay only half-concealed beneath them the steady 
horrible conviction that nothing now was of the slightest 
account; that the spirit within him, past all hope of ease 
and happiness and reassurance, resembled a wretched 
fiend howling in the midst of a black cloud—darkness 
and tempest. Once more leaning his head a little side- 
138 


Disillusioned 


long he glanced at his reflection in the glass of a picture, 
and buttoned up the last button of his waistcoat. 

“I am afraid, doctor,” he murmured, “I must have 
been the worst possible type of patient. And what is as 
bad, I ought not to have forced myself on you at this 
particular time—outside your consulting hours, I mean, 
which I confess to having seen on the doorplate. I 
gather too that just now you are actually taking a holi- 
day. It was infamous. I hope you will forgive me!” 

There was something curiously winning and amiable 
in the looks of the little man as the doctor glanced up at 
him and smiled, assuring him that there was no need 
whatever for such apologies. Indeed Dr. Lidgett’s one 
inward and unspoken regret was his incapacity to be of 
any real service to his patient. Only in the most rudi- 
mentary fashion could he minister to a mind diseased— 
even his own. That he knew. He knew too, only too 
well, that he could but potter around the problem which 
had been presented to him, and that even any practical 
advice he might give—a few little commonsensical direc- 
tions regarding work, exercise, food, sleep and so on— 
would probably be ignored and forgotten as soon as his 
visitor was out of the house. 

Was not Humanity itself for that matter habitually 
ignoring counsel and directions from mind and heart that 
were none the less sound for being instinctive and com- 
monplace? The pity was that when so little was really 
wrong—for, so far as the mere circumstances of his 
visitor were concerned, there appeared to be absurdly 
little justification for complaint—there was no obvious 
handle to take hold of. These maladies of the spirit— 
what cure for them? Probably his best advice would be: 

139 


Disillusioned 


Try the streets, my friend, for a week ur two, without 
a halfpenny in your pocket and with your jacket for 
shirt. Or, Give away all you’ve got and get a dust- 
man’s, or stoker’s, or fish-porter’s job; and then come 
back to me in a month’s time. Or, Take up some beastly 
philanthropic work—visiting cancer patients or syphilitic 
children. No doubt what Mr. Pritchard was really in 
need of was a moral shock: something to “larn him’ to 
be a pessimist and a hypochondriac. 

Nothing of all this showed on Dr. Lidgett’s tranquil 
and sober face, however. He went about what he was ~ 
at with an almost feminine neatness and circumspection. 
And though his hand trembled a little as he held out the 
prescription he had written down, he talked quietly on 
awhile, specifying with precision the little things that 
might be of benefit, and assuring his visitor that the 
worst thing in the world was to look too closely at things. 
Except, of course, at things of nature, which after all 
(and in spite of his little extravaganza) had up to the 
present proved astonishingly faithful, and bore even the 
keenest scrutiny with triumphant ease. Provided you 
accepted its mute decrees and vetoes, with as much resolu- 
tion as you were capable of. 

He did not utter this last thought aloud, however. It 
had occurred to him merely because his eye had once 
more strayed to the young green leafing plum-tree cruci- 
fied upon his garden wall. But the rest of his profes- 
sional advice had not fallen on deaf ears, apparently. 
With a smiling reference to his “pestilent’”? memory, his 
visitor had actually gone so far as to scribble down a few 
memoranda in his pocket-book while the doctor was 
speaking. 

140 


Disillusioned 


But when the pleasant suppressed voice had ceased, the 
merest glance at those restless eyes, as Mr. Pritchard 
pushed back the tiny pencil into its place, and re- 
pocketed his pocket-book, would have perceived that once 
more the spirit within was circling like a coal-black swift 
over a gloomy and deserted waste of stones and brawling 
water—would have perceived, too, that the superficial 
mind of the creature was as active as ever over its own 
chosen trifles. He looked at the doctor, opened his mouth, 
hesitated : and even began again. 

“The curious thing is,” he said, “and oddly enough it 
has only just occurred to me—I once began a story with 
a situation in it very much like ours now.” 

The doctor raised his head and lifted his eyebrows a 
little. It had at last occurred to his generous and un- 
suspicious mind that this scarecrow of a fellow was 
merely amusing himself at his expense, that he was mak- 
ing a butt of him. But at one glimpse again of that 
candid, darkly-hollowed face, the tiny flame of righteous 
indignation that had sprung up within him instantly 
faded out. 

“How that?” he said kindly. 

“Why, it was like this. The author—who was what is 
called for some God-forsaken reason a realist, which so 
far as I can make out merely means that he restricts 
his material (just like most of our men of science) to 
what ordinary human beings in their ordinary human mo- 
ments would agree are ‘the facts of the case’-—this author 
goes to a doctor. Neither of them was like ourselves. 
My author was a raw-boned, lanky fellow, with a shock 
of reddish hair; and the doctor was a kind of specialist, 
or rather consultant; a dark saturnine man with bristling 

I4I 


Disillusioned 


black eyebrows—pallid. The author—mainly in search 
of copy, of course—concocted some cock-and-bull story 
that his wife had suicidal tendencies. And what did the 
specialist advise?” 

“And what did he advise?” enquired Dr. Lidgett, but 
not as if with any particular curiosity. 

“Well, you see, the doctor himself was at his last gasp, 
so to ‘speak—had been speculating, and had lost all his 
money. And in addition, or in subtraction, whichever 
way one likes to put it, his own wife had run away from 
him. He asked his visitor a few questions, and the 
wretch, having a pretty quick invention and abundant 
sangfroid, supplied him with vivid and convincing details 
of his wife’s symptoms: how she had been dragged back 
angry and weeping from the very jaws of the grave.” 

“And how did it end?” 

The question was hardly audible even in the quietness 
of this habitually quiet room. The sound of the words 
indeed hardly interrupted the capricious little air which 
the restless water was tapping into its basin behind the 
screen. Mr. Pritchard had leaned forward in his chair 
as if he were momentarily uncertain if the doctor had 
spoken at all. 

“Oh,” he replied at last, “it never ended at all. You 
see, when I was half way through, I came across a story 
by Anton Tchekhov—the Russian writer you know— 
which has a somewhat similar theme. Near enough to 
mine, at any rate, to ensure that the reviewers would have 
accused me of plagiarising if I had published it. But 
that is one of the amusing things about this deplorable 
life of ours—we are all incorrigible plagiarists, or, at 
best, parasites. We live on other people’s well-being 


142 


Disillusioned 


and happiness, our friends and relations. Even on their 
characters! Ask a father what he thinks of life when 
his son has gone to the bad, or—or anything of that kind. 
We can’t help ourselves. Even to die and be free of it 
all is a woeful slap in the face to one’s nearest and dear- 
est. The curious detail in my story,” he pushed on al- 
most gaily, “curious, I mean, as things go—was that 
there was actually a photograph in a silver frame on the 
doctor’s table very much like that one there. But in this 
case my enterprising young Mr. McKay could actually 
see it—the photograph of a young woman—a lovely, se- 
ductive, dangerous-looking creature. It was a photo- 
graph, in fact, of the doctor’s wife who had run away. 
And—as my ginger-haired friend compared the victim 
and the victimised—he could hardly find it in his head 
to blame the gay seducer. As a matter of fact I hated 
the story.” 

Dr. Lidgett stirred heavily in his chair, and for the 
last time fixed intent eyes on his visitor’s face. “That 
was indeed a coincidence,” he said. “For the portrait 
here on my table is also a photograph of my wife.” 

He was now quite still and composed again, gazing 
fixedly but tranquilly at his visitor yet as if only by 
keeping him well in focus he would be able to maintain 
his own professional calm and aloofness. Besides, in 
spite of the sharpest disinclination, he wished intensely to 
make the fleeting relation between them friendly and help- 
ful to the end. “However, it’s a coincidence,” he added, 
“that goes no further. I must some day read the story 
you mention—by the Russian writer. What did you say 
the name was?” " 

“Tchekhov—he was himself a doctor, you know, and 

: 143 


Disillusioned 

a devilish good one too, simply unwearying in doing good, 
besides being the finest writer of short stories, in my 
humble opinion, of any I know.” 

With these words Mr. Pritchard rose hastily out of 
his chair; and once more that awful vacancy spread up 
into his face. To look at that face now, it might be 
merely a cruel caricature of himself—dark, discolored 
null, without interest, hope or desire. He gulped—like 
a child after a long fit of crying—and held out his hand. 

“Well doctor,” he said, “you have been enormously 
kind to me; far, far kinder than I deserve. But you can 
have no notion what a help it has been just to—to have 
talked like this. Quite candidly, I doubt if any remedies 
can now be of much service; but I will do my best to 
follow your advice. Anyhow, I am not like that poor — 
wretch’s wife in my story: I shan’t go to any extreme! 
In the first place I doubt if I have the courage to—to run 
away. And in the second, my own conviction is that 
there are so many people in this world in much the same 
state of mind as I am, that if any large proportion of us 
decided—well, to try elsewhere, the statistics would be 
positively alarming. That alone would solve the Mal- 
thusian problem. 

“I suppose—to give it a fine-sounding phrase—it is the 
disease of our modern civilisation: nothing definitely, 
tragically wrong, but just the general condition of things. 
Not that I am so foolish as to make any claim to being a 
thinker; I hardly even deserve the name of a feeler. I 
look on, chiefly. But it is this fate of being a human 
being at all, with this appalling power of watching our- 
selves suffer, that becomes at last almost intolerable. 
The power, too,” he smiled, “of be:ng actually able to 


144 


Disillusioned 


describe our symptoms. And at considerable length, doc- 
tor. But there, I have had one supreme advantage this 
afternoon; for you have listened to me, whereas we hu- 
mans in general in these days seem in the long run to 
have no one whatsoever to confide in. No one, I mean, 
in heaven or earth whom we really seem to trust any 
longer.” 

He paused, softly drawing his hand round the brim of 
his hat; then once more smiled—that curiously childish 
ingratiating smile. “Even at that,” he added, “I feel you 
would be right in labelling me something of a fraud; for 
whatever happens—rest or no rest—I shall probably go 
on with my work all right. It’s an odd thing, but, do 
you know, nothing seems to have the slightest effect upon 
that. I dare say that is your experience, too. My old 
mother sometimes tells our friends, ‘Charles thoroughly 
enjoys his work, you know. . . . Charles thoroughly en- 
joys his writing.” And Charles can’t deny it. That 
alone should be almost enough to convince one that this is 
a mechanistic universe. Once wound up, and with 
enough ink and paper in the machine, one just goes on 
and on, like—well, even better than clockwork!’ 

Dr. Lidgett took the hand stretched out to him and held 
it for the briefest moment clasped warmly in his own. 
His lips moved a little, as if in an attempt to express the 
inexpressible; or even to utter a syllable or two of kind- 
ness concerning Mr. Pritchard’s old mother. But he 
made no further remark. He led the way to the door, then 
followed his visitor across the hall. A Sheraton barom- 
eter stood opposite the hat-stand. Something had gone 
wrong with its works. Its needle stood at “Set Fair,” 
whereas but one casual glance at the exquisite mack- 


145 


Disillusioned 


erel sky above the trees under the open porch was proof 
enough of the caprices of an English spring. Dr. Lidgett 
stood holding the handle of the front door; and, looking 
out, watched his visitor until he had reached the gate. 

For some reason, most of his patients, he had noticed, 
were punctilious in the matter of closing the gate after 
them, when they left his house. They did it firmly, 
scrupulously, finally, and without noise. This patient— 
Mr. Pritchard—went even further. He once more 
turned, showing under his hard felt hat that dark white 
face—rather like a telescopic rendering of the landscapes 
of the moon. ‘Then he raised that hat, and smiled. Dr. 
Lidgett in response lifted his hand; and his visitor 
vanished behind the privet hedge. 

These, of course, were but gestures of common courtesy. 
And yet, in the quiet damp air, in that darkening spring 
twilight, they seemed to be pregnant signals rushing to 
meet and to cross and to combine—like secret messages 
in the sphere of the telepathic. 

Having bidden his visitor this almost solemn adieu, Dr. 
Lidgett had then as gently and firmly shut his front door, 
and turned back into his surgery. He at once sat down 
at his desk and scribbled into his day-book a neat and 
methodical account of the interview that had just come 
to an end. He-then shut the book, leaned back in his 
chair, folded his well-kept competent hands; and his 
empty eyes, as if of their own volition, strayed towards 
the photograph on his table. 

That too was the photograph of a young and lovely 
face, but not a “dangerous” one. And its owner had cer- 
tainly not “run away.” She had merely “gone” away, and 
for good, and very unwillingly. 

146 


Tan HE autumnal afternoon was creeping 
| steadily on towards night; the sun after 
| the morning’s rain was now—from be- 
hind thinning clouds—glinting down on 
| the chimney-pots and slate roofs of Mr. 
4 Thripp’s suburb. And the day being a 
Saturday, across Europe, across England, an immense 
multitudinous stirring of humanity was in progress. It 
had begun in remote Australia and would presently sweep 
across the Atlantic into vast America, resembling the - 
rustling of an ant-heap in a pine wood in sunny June. 
The Christian world, that is, was preparing for its weekly 
half-holiday ; and Mr. Thripp was taking his share. 

As if time were of unusual importance to him, two 
clocks stood on his kitchen mantelpiece: one, gay as a 
peepshow in the middle, in a stained wood case with red 
and blue flowers on the glass front; the other an “alarum”’ 
—which though it was made of tin had a voice and an 
appearance little short of the brazen. Above them, as if 
entirely oblivious to their ranting, a glazed King Edward 
VII stared stolidly out of a Christmas lithograph, with 
his Orders on his royal breast. 

Mr. Thripp’s kitchen table was at this moment dis- 
ordered with the remains of a meal, straggling over a 
tablecloth that had now gallantly completed its full week’s 
service. Like all Saturday dinners in his household, this 


147 





The Nap 


has been a hugger-mugger dinner—one of vehement re- 
lays. Mr. Thripp himself had returned home from his 
office at a quarter to two—five minutes after his daugh- 
ter Millie and Mrs. Thripp had already begun. Charlie 
Thripp had made his appearance a little before the hour; 
and James—who somehow had never become Jim or 
Jimmie—arrived soon afterwards. To each his due, kept 
warm. 

But the hasty feeding was now over. Mr. Thripp in 
his shirt-sleeves, and with his silver watch-chain dis- 
posed upon his front, had returned once more from the 
scullery with his empty tray. He was breathing heavily, 
for he inclined nowadays, as he would sometimes confess, 
to the ongbongpong. He had remarkably muscular arms 
for a man of his sedentary profession, that of ledger-clerk 
in Messrs. Bailey, Bailey and Company’s counting house. 
His small eyes, usually half-hidden by their plump lids, 
were of a bright, clear blue. His round head was covered 
with close-cut hair; he had fullish lips, and his ample jowl 
always appeared as if it had been freshly shaved—even 
on Saturday afternoons. 

Mr. Thripp delighted in Saturday afternoons. He de- 
lighted in house-work. Though he never confessed it to 
a living soul (and even though it annoyed Tilda to hear 
him) he delighted too in imitating the waitresses in the 
tea-shops, and rattled the plates and dishes together as if 
they were made of a material unshatterable and ever- 
lasting. When alone at the sink he would hiss like a 
groom currying a full-grown mare. He packed the tray 
full of dirty dishes once more, and returned into the 
_ steam of the scullery. 

“You get along now, Tilda,” he said to his wife who 
148 7 


The Nap ° 


was drying up. “We shall have that Mrs. Brown knock- 
ing every minute, and that only flusters you.” 

Mrs. Thripp looked more ill-tempered than she really 
was—with her angular face and chin, pitch-dark eyes, 
and dark straight hair. With long damp fingers she drew 
back a limp strand of hair that had straggled over her 
forehead. 

“What beats me is, you never take a bit of enjoyment 
yourself,” she replied. “It isn’t fair to us. I slave 
away, morning, noon and night; but that’s just as things 
are. But other husbands get out and about; why not 
your Let her knock! She’s got too much money to 
waste; that’s what’s the matter with her. I don’t know 
what you wouldn’t take her for in that new get-up she’s 
got.” 

Then what the devil do you go about with her for? 
were the words that entered Mr. Thripp’s mind; and as 
for slaving, haven’t I just asked you to give over? Have 
reason, woman! But he didn’t utter them. “That’ll be 
all right,” he said instead, in his absurd genial way. 
“You get on along off, Tilda; I'll see to all this. I enjoy 
myself my own way, don’t you fear. Did you never hear 
of the selfish sex? Well, that’s me!’ 

“Oh yes, I know all about that,” said his wife sen- 
tentiously : “a pinch of salt on a bird’s tail! But there’s 
no need for sarcasms. Now do be careful with that dish, 
there. It don’t belong to us, but to next door. She gave 
me one of her pancakes on it—and nothing better than 
a shapeless bit of leather, either. Just to show she was 
once in service as a cook-general, I suppose; though she 
never owns to it.” 

A spiteful old mischief-maker, if you asked me, was 

149 


The Nap 


Mr. Thripp’s inward comment. But “Oh well, Tilda, 
she means all right,” he said soothingly. “Don’t you 
worry. Now get along off with you; it’s a hard day, 
Saturday, but you won’t know yourself when you come 
down again.” As if forced into a line of conduct she 
deprecated and despised, Tilda flung her wet tea-cloth 
over a chair, and, with heart beating gaily beneath her 
shrunken breast, hastened away. 

Mr. Thripp began to whistle under his breath as he 
turned on the hot water tap again. It was the one thing 
he insisted on—a lavish supply of hot water. He was no 
musician and only himself knew the tune he was in search 
of; but it kept him going as vigorously as a company of 
grenadiers on the march, and he invariably did his house- 
hold jobs against time. It indulged a sort of gambling 
instinct in him; and the more he hated his job the louder 
he whistled. So as a small boy he had met the challenge 
of the terrors of the dark. “Keep going,” he would say. 
“Don’t let things mess over. That’s waste!” 

_At that moment, his elder son, James, appeared in the 
scullery doorway. James took after his mother’s side of 
the family. In his navy blue serge suit, light-brown 
shoes, mauve socks and spotted tie, he showed what care- 
ful dressing can do for a man. A cigarette sagged from 
his lower lip. His head was oblong, and flat-sided, and 
his eyes had a damp and vacant look. He thrust his face 
an inch or two into the succulent steam beyond the door- 
way. 

“Well, dad, I’m off,” he said. 

Oh, my God! thought his father; if only you’d drop 
those infernal fags. Smoke, smoke, smoke, morning to 
night; and you that pasty-looking I can’t imagine what 
150 


The Nap 


the girl sees in you, with your nice superior ways. 
“Right you are, my son,” he said aloud, “I won’t ask 
you to take a hand! Enjoy yourself while you’re young, 
I say. But slow and steady does it. Where might you 
be bound for this afternoon ?” 

“Oh, tea with Ivy’s people,” said James magnanimously. 
“Pretty dull going, I can tell you.” 

“But it won’t be tea all the evening, I suppose?” said his 
father, pushing a steaming plate into the plate-rack. 

“Oh, I dare say we shall loaf off to a Revoo or some- 
thing,” said James. He tossed his cigarette end into the 
sink, but missed the refuse strainer. Mr. Thripp picked 
it up with a fork and put it into the receptacle it was in- 
tended for, while James “lit up” again. 

“Well, so long,” said his father, “don’t spoil that 
Sunday-go-to-Meeting suit of yours with all this steam. 
And by the way, James, I owe you five shillings for that 
little carpentering job you did for me. It’s on the sitting- 
room shelf.” 

“Right ho. Thanks, dad,” said James. “I thought it 
was six. But never mind.” 

His father flashed a glance at his son—a glance like 
the smouldering of a coal. “That so? Well, make it 
six, then,’ he said. “And I’m much obliged.” 

“Oh, that’s nothing,’ replied James graciously. 
“Cheerio; don’t overdo it, dad.” 

Mr. Thripp returned to his washing-up. He was 
thinking rapidly with an extraordinary medley of feeling 
—as if he were not one Mr. Thripp, but many. None the 
less, his whistling broke out anew, as though, like a 
canary, in rivalry with the gushing of the tap. After 
loading up his tray with crockery for the last time, he put 

151 


The Nap 


its contents away in the cupboard, and on the kitchen 
dresser; cleansed the drain, swabbed up the sink, swabbed 
up the cracked cement floor, hung up his dish-clout, rinsed 
his hands, and returned into the kitchen. / 

Millie in a neat, tailor-made costume which had that 
week marvellously survived dyeing, was now posed be- 
fore the little cracked square of kitchen looking-glass. 
She was a pale, slim thing. Her smooth hair, of a light- 
ish brown streaked with gold and parted in the middle, 
resembled a gilded frame surrounding her mild angelic 
face—a face such as the medizval sculptors in France de- 
lighted to carve on their altar-pieces. Whatever she wore 
became her—even her skimpy old pale-blue flannel 
dressing-gown. 

She turned her narrow pretty face sidelong under her 
hat and looked at her father. She looked at every human 
being like that—even at her own reflection in a shop 
window, even at a flower in a glass. She spent her whole 
life subtly, instinctively, wordlessly courting. She had 
as many young men as the White Queen has pawns: 
though not all of them remained long in her service. 

It’s all very well to be preening yourself in that mirror, 
my girl, her father was thinking, but you’d be far better 
off in the long run if you did a bit more to help your 
mother, even though you do earn a fraction of your 
living. More thinking and less face, J say. And all 
that ! But “Why, I never see such a girl as you, 
Millie,” he greeted her incredulously, “for looking your 
best! And such a best, too, my dear. Which young 
spark is it to be this afternoon? Eh?” 

“Sparks! dad; how you do talk. Why, I don’t hardly 
know, dad. Sparks!’ Millie’s voice almost invariably 
152 





The Nap 


ran down the scale like the notes of a dulcimer muted 
with velvet. “I wasn’t thinking of anybody in particular,” 
she went on, continuing to watch her moving mouth in 
the glass, “but I promised Nellie Gibbs I . . . One thing, 
I am not going to stay out long on a day like this!” 

“What's the matter with the day?’ Mr. Thripp en- 
quired. 

“The matter! Why, look at it! It’s a fair filthy mug 
of a day.” The words slipped off her pretty curved lips 
like pearls over satin. A delicious anguish seemed to 
have arched the corners of her eyelids. 

“Well, ain’t there such a thing as a mackingtosh in the 
house, then?’ enquired her father briskly. 

“Mackingtosh! Over this! Oh, isn’t that just like 
aman! I should look a perfect guy.” She stood gazing 
at him, like a gazelle startled by the flurry of a breeze 
across the placid surface of its drinking-pool. 

Now see you here, my girl, that see-saw voice inside 
her father was expostulating once more, what’s the good 
of mem fine silly airs? I take you for an honest man’s 
daughter with not a ha’penny to spare on fal-lals and 
monkey-traps. That won't get youa husband. But Mr. 
Thripp once more ignored its interruption. He smiled 
almost roguishly out of his bright blue eyes at his daugh- 
ter. “Ask me what I take you for, my dear? Why, I 
take you for a nice, well-meaning, though remarkably 
plain young woman. Eh? But there, there, don’t worry. 
What I say is, make sure of the best (and the best that’s 
inside) and let the other young fellows go.” 

He swept the last clean fork on the table into the 
drawer and folded up the tablecloth. 

‘Oh, dad, how you do go on!” breathed Millie. “It’s 

153 


The Nap 


always fellows you’re thinking of. As if fellows made 
any difference.” Her glance roamed a little startledly 
round the room. “What J can’t understand,” she added 
quickly, “is why we never have a clean tablecloth. How 
can anybody ask a friend home to their own place if that’s 
the kind of thing they are going to eat off of?’ The 
faint nuance of discontent in her voice only made it the 
more enchanting and seductive. She might be Sleeping 
Beauty babbling out of her dreams. 

A cataract of invective coursed through the channels of 
Mr. Thripp’s mind. He paused an instant to give the 
soiled tablecloth another twist and the table another pro- — 
longed sweep of that formidable right arm which for 
twenty-three years had never once been lifted in chastise- 
ment of a single one of his three offspring. Then he 
turned and glanced at the fire. 

“T wouldn’t,” he said, seizing the shovel, “I wouldn’t 
let mother hear that, my dear. We all have a good many 
things to put up with. And what I say is, all in good 
time. You bring that Mr. Right along! and I can 
promise him not only a clean tablecloth but something 
appetising to eat off of it. A bit of a fire in the sitting- 
room too, for that matter.” 

“You’re a good sort, dad,” said Millie, putting up her 
face to be kissed—in complete confidence that the tiny 
powder-puff in her vanity-bag would soon adjust any 
possible mishap to the tip of her small nose. “But I don’t 
believe you ever think J think of anything.” 

“Good-bye, my dear,” said Mr. Thripp; “don’t kiss me. 
T am all of a smother with the washing-up.” 

“Toodle-loo, ma,’’ Millie shrilled, as her father followed 
her out into the passage. He drew open the front door, 


154 


The Nap 


secreting his shirt-sleeves well behind it in case of curious 
passers-by. 

“Take care of yourself, my dear,” he called after her, 
“and don’t be too late.” 

“Late!’’ tossed Millie, “any one would think I had 
been coddled up in a hot-house.”’ 

Out of a seething expense of spirit in Mr. Thripp’s 
mind only a few words made themselves distinct. ‘Well, 
never mind, my precious dear. I’m with you for ever, 
whether you know it or not.” 

He returned into the house, and at once confronted 
his younger son, Charlie, who was at that moment de- 
scending the stairs. As a matter of fact he was descend- 
ing the stairs like fifteen Charlies, and nothing so much 
exasperated his father as to feel the whole house rock 
on its foundations at each fresh impact. 

“Off to your Match, my boy?” he cried. “Some day 
I expect you will be taking a hand in the game yourself. 
Better share than watch!” 

Every single Saturday afternoon during the football 
season Mr. Thripp ventured to express some such op- 
timistic sentiment as this. But Charlie had no objection; 
not at all. 

“Not me, dad,” he assured him good-humouredly. 
“T’d sooner pay a bob to see other fellows crocked up. 
You couldn’t lend me one, I suppose?” 

“Lend you what?” 

“Two panera four frippenies ; a twelfth of a gross of 
coppers.” 

Good God! yelled Mr. Thripp’s inward monitor, am I 
never to have a minute’s rest or relief ? But it yelled in 
vain. 


55 


The Nap 


“Right you are, my son,” he said instead, and thrust- 
ing his fleshy hand into his tight-fitting trouser-pocket he 
brought out a fistful of silver and pence. “And there,” 
he added, “‘there’s an extra sixpence free, gratis, and for 
nothing, for the table dhéte. All I say is, Charlie, 
better say ‘give’ when there isn’t much chance of keep- 
ing to the ‘lend.’ I don’t want to preach; but that’s 
always been my rule; and kept it too, as well as I could.” 

Charles counted the coins in his hand, and looked at 
his father. He grinned companionably. He invariably 
found his father a little funny to look at. He seemed 
somehow to be so remote from anything you could mean 
by things as they are, and things as they are now. He 
wasn’t so much old-fashioned, as just a Gone-by. He was 
his father, of course, just as a jug is a jug, and now 
and then Charlie was uncommonly fond of him, longed 
for his company, and remembered being a little boy walk- 
ing with him in the Recreation Ground. But he wished 
he wouldn’t be always giving advice, and especially the 
kind of advice which he had himself assiduously prac- 
tised. 

“Ta, dad,” he said; “that’s doing me proud. Ill buy 
you a box of Havanas with what’s over from the table 
dhéote. And now we're square. Good-bye, dad.” He 
paused as he turned to go. “Honour bright,” he added, 
“T hope I shall be earning a bit more soon, and then I 
shan’t have to ask you for anything.” 

A curious shine came into Mr. Thripp’s small lively 
eyes; it seemed almost to spill over on to his plump 
cheeks. It looked as if those cheeks had even paled a 
little. 

“Why, that’s all right, Charlie, me boy,” he mumbled, 
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“T'd give you the skin off me body if it would be of any 
use. That’s all right. Don’t stand about too long but 
just keep going. What I can’t abide is these young fel- 
lows that swallow down their enjoyments like so much 
black draught. But we are not that kind of a family, 
I’m thankful to say.” 

“Not me!” said Charles, with a grimace like a good- 
humoured marmoset, and off he went to his soccer match. 

Hardly had the sound of his footsteps ceased—and 
Mr. Thripp stayed there in the passage, as if to listen 
till they were for ever out of hearing—when there came 
a muffled secretive tap on the panel of the door. At 
sound of it the genial podgy face blurred and blackened. 

Oh, it’s you, you cringing Jezebel, is it?—the thought 
scurried through his mind like a mangy animal. Mr. 
Thripp indeed was no lover of the ultra-feminine. He 
either feared it, or hated it, or both feared and hated it. 
It disturbed his even tenour. It was a thorn in the side 
of the Mr. Thripp that not only believed second thoughts 
were best, but systematically refused to give utterance to 
first. Any sensible person, he would say, ought to know 
when he’s a bit overtaxed, and act according. 

The gloved fingers, Delilah-like, had tapped again. 
Mr. Thripp tiptoed back into the kitchen, put on his coat, 
and opened the door. 

“Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Brown,” he said. “Tilda won’t 
be a moment. She’s upstairs titivating. Come in and 
take a seat.” 

His eyes meanwhile were informing that inward censor 
of his precisely how many inches thick the mauvish face- 
powder lay on Mrs. Brown’s cheek, the liver-coloured 
lip-stick on her mouth, and the dye on her loaded eye- 

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lashes. Those naturally delicate lashes swept down in a 
gentle fringe upon her cheek as she smiled in reply. She 
was a graceful thing, too, but practised; and far more 
feline, far far more body-conscious than Millie. No 
longer in the blush of youth either; though still mistress 
of the gift that never leaves its predestined owner—the 
impulse and power to fascinate mere man. Still, there 
were limitations even to Mrs. Brown’s orbit of attraction, 
and Mr. Thripp might have been Neptune itself he kept 
himself so far out in the cold. 

He paused a moment at the entrance to the sitting- 
room, until his visitor had seated herself. He was eye- 
ing her Frenchified silk scarf, her demure new hat, her 
smart high-heeled patent-leather shoes, but his eyes 
dropped like stones when he discovered her own dark 
languishing ones surveying him from under that hat’s be- 
guiling brim. 

“Nice afternoon after the rain,” he remarked instantly. 
“Going to the pictures, I suppose? As for meself, these 
days make me want to be out and in at the same time. 
It’s the musty, fusty, smoky dark of them places J can’t 
stand.” 

Mrs. Brown rarely raised her voice much above a 
whisper. Indeed it appeared to be a physical effort to 
her to speak at all. She turned her face a little sidelong, 
her glance on the carpet. “Why, it’s the dark I en- 
joy, Mr. Thripp,”’ she said. “It’”—and she raised her 
own—“it rests the eyes so.” 

For an instant Mr. Thripp’s memory returned to Millie, 
but he made no comment. 

“Here’s Mrs. Brown, Tilda,” he called up the stair- 
case. Good heavens, the woman might as well be the 


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real thing, the voice within was declaring. But the words 
that immediately followed up this piece of news were 
merely, “You'll be mighty surprised to hear, Tilda, Mrs. 
Brown’s got a new hat.” A faint catcall of merriment 
descended the stairs. 

“Oh, now, Mr. Thripp, listen to that!” whispered the 
peculiar voice from out of the little airless sitting-room, 
“you always did make fun of me, Mr. Thripp. Do I 
deserve it, now?” 

A gentle wave of heat coursed over Mr. Thripp as he 
covertly listened to these accents, but he was out of sight. 

“Fun, Mrs. Brown? Never,” he retorted gallantly; 
“it’s only my little way.” And then to his immense re- 
lief on lifting his eyes, discovered Tilda already descend- 
ing the stairs. 

He saw the pair of them off. Being restored to his 
coat, he could watch them clean down the drying street 
from his gate-post. Astonishing, he thought, what a 
difference there can be in two women’s backs! ‘Tuilda’s, 
straight, angular, and respectable, as you might say; and 
that other—sinuous, seductive, as if it were as crafty a 
means of expression as the very smile and long-lashed 
languishments upon its owner’s face. ‘What can the old 
woman see in her!” he muttered to himself; ‘damned if 
I know!” On this problem Mr. Thripp firmly shut his 
front door. Having shut it he stooped to pick up a tiny 
white feather on the linoleum; and stooping, sighed. 

At last his longed-for hour had come—the hour for 
which his very soul pined throughout each workaday 
week. Not that it was always his happy fate to be left 
completely alone like this. At times, indeed, he had for 
company far too much housework to leave him any lei- 


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‘sure. But to-day the dinner things were cleared away, 
the washing-up was over, the tables fair as a baker’s 
board, the kitchen spick and span, the house empty. He 
would just have a look round his own and Tilda’s bed- 
room (and, maybe, the boys’ and Millie’s). And then 
the chair by the fire; the simmering kettle on the hearth; 
and the soft tardy autumnal dusk fading quietly into night 
beyond the window. 

It was a curious thing that a man who loved his family 
so much, who was as desperately loyal to every member 
of it as a she-wolf is to her cubs, should yet find this few 
minutes’ weekly solitude a luxury such as only Paradise, 
one would suppose, would ever be able to provide. 

Mr. Thripp went upstairs and not only tidied up his 
own and Tilda’s bedroom, and went on to Millie’s and the 
boys’, but even gave a sloosh to the bath, slid the soap 
out of the basin where Charles had abandoned it, and 
hung up the draggled towels again in the tiny bathroom. 
What a place looks like when you come back to it from 
your little enjoyments—it’s that makes all the difference 
to your feelings about a home. These small chores done, 
Mr. Thripp put on an old tweed coat with frayed sleeves, 
and returned to the kitchen. In a quarter of an hour 
that too more than ever resembled a new pin. 

Then he glanced up at the clocks; between them the 
time was a quarter to four. He was amazed. He laid 
the tea, took out of his little old leather bag a pot of 
jam which he had bought for a surprise on his way home, 
and arranged a bunch of violets in a small jar beside 
Tilda’s plate. But apart from these family preparations, 
Mr. Thripp was now depositing a demure little glossy 
brown teapot all by itself on the kitchen range. This was 
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his Eureka. This was practically the only sensual secret 
luxury Mr. Thripp had ever allowed himself since he 
became a family man. ‘Tilda’s cooking was good enough 
for him provided that the others had their little dainties 
now and then. He enjoyed his beer, and could do a. bit 
of supper occasionally with a friend. But the ritual of 
these solitary Saturday afternoons reached its climax in 
this small pot of tea. First the nap sweet as nirvana 
in his easy-chair, then the tea, and then the still, pro- 
found quarter of an hour’s musing before the door- 
knocker began again. 

Having pulled down the blind a little in order to pre- 
vent any chance of draught, Mr. Thripp eased his boot- 
laces, sat himself in his chair, his cheek turned a little 
away from the window, his feet on the box that usually 
lay under the table, and with fingers clasped over his 
stomach composed himself to sleep. The eyelids closed; 
the lips set; the thumbs twitched now and again. He 
breathed deep, and the kettle began a whispered anthem 
—as if a myriad voices were singing on and on without 
need of pause or rest, a thousand thousand leagues away. 

But now there was none to listen; and beyond quiet 
hung thick in the little house. Only the scarce-perceptible 
“hum of the traffic at the end of the narrow side street 
was audible on the air. Within, the two clocks on the 
chimney-piece quarrelled furiously over the fleeting mo- 
ments, attaining unanimity only in one of many ticks. 
Ever and again a tiny scutter of dying ashes rejoined 
those that had gone before in the pan beneath the fire. 
Soon even these faint stirrings became inaudible and in 
a few moments Mr. Thripp’s spirit would have wafted 
itself completely free awhile from its earthly tenement, 

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if, suddenly, the image of Millie—more vivid than even 
the actual sight of her a few minutes before—had not 
floated up into the narrow darkness of her father’s tight- 
shut eyes. 

But this was not the image of Millie as her father 
usually saw her. A pathetic earthly melancholy lay over 
the fair angelic features. The young cheek was sunken 
in; the eye was faded, dejected, downcast; and her cheek 
was stubbornly turned away from her father, as if she 
resented or was afraid of his scrutiny. 

At this vision a headlong anxiety darted across Mr. 
Thripp’s half-slumbering mind. His heart began heavily 
beating: and then a pulse in his forehead. Where was 
she now? What forecast, what warning was this? 
Millie was no fool. Millie knew her way about. And 
her mother if anything was perhaps a little too censorious 
of the ways of this wicked world. If you keep on talk- 
ing at a girl, hinting of things that might otherwise not 
enter her head—that in itself is dangerous. Love itself 
even must edge in warily. The tight-shut lids blinked 
anxiously. But where was Millie now? Somewhere in- 
doors, but where? Who with? 

Mr. Thripp saw her first in a teashop, sitting opposite 
a horrid young man with his hair greased back over his 
low round head, and a sham pin in his tie. His elbows 
were on the marble-top table, and he was looking at Millie 
very much as a young but experienced pig looks at his 
wash-trough. Perhaps she was at the Pictures? Dulcet 
accents echoed into the half-dreaming mind— “But I en- 
joy the dark, Mr. Thripp. . . . It rests the eyes.” Why 
did the woman talk as if she had never more than half 
a breath to spare? Rest her eyes! She never at any 
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rate wanted to rest the eyes of any fool in trousers who 
happened to be within glimpse of her own. It was al- 
most unnaturally dark in the cinema of Mr. Thripp’s 
fancy at this moment; yet he could now see his Millie 
with her pale, harmless, youthful face, as plainly as if 
she were the “close-up” of some star from Los Angeles 
on the screen. And now the young man in her company 
was almost as fair as herself, with a long-chinned sheep- 
ish face and bolting eyes; and the two of them were 
amorously hand in hand. 

For a moment Mr. Thripp sat immovable, as if a bugle 
had sounded in his ear. Then he deliberately opened 
his eyes and glanced about him. The November daylight 
was already beginning to fade. Yes, he would have a 
word with Millie—but not when she came home that eve- 
ning. It is always wiser to let the actual coming-home be 
pleasant and welcoming. To-morrow morning, perhaps; 
that is, if her mother was not goading at her for being 
late down and lackadaisical when there was so much to 
be done. Nevertheless, all in good time he would have 
a little quiet word with her. He would say only what 
he would not afterwards regret having said. He had 
meant to do that ages ago; but you mustn’t flood a house 
with water when it’s not on fire. She was but a mere 
slip of a thing—like a flower, not a wild flower, but one 
of those sweet waxen flowers you see blooming in a 
florist’s window—which you must be careful with and 
not just expose anywhere. 

And yet how his own little place here could be com- 
pared with anything in the nature of a hot-house he could 
not for the life of him understand. Delicate-looking! 
Everybody said that. God bless me, perhaps her very 

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lackadaisicalness was a symptom of some as yet hidden 
malady. Good God, supposing! . . . He would take her 
round to see the doctor as soon as he could. But the 
worst of it was you had to do these things on your own 
responsibility. And though Mr. Thripp was now a man 
close on fifty, sometimes he felt as if he could no longer 
bear the burden of all these responsibilities. Sometimes 
he felt as if he couldn’t endure to brood over them as 
he was sometimes wont to do. If he did, he would snap. 
People looked old; but nobody was really old inside; not 
old at least in the sense that troubles were any the lighter, 
or forebodings any the more easily puffed away; or 
tongues easier to keep still; or tempers to control. 

And talking of tempers reminded him of Charlie. 
What on earth was going to be done with Charlie? 
There was no difficulty in conjuring up, in seeing Charlie 
—that is if he really did go every Saturday to a football 
match. But Charlie was now of an age when he might 
think it a fine manly thing to be loafing about the counter 
of a pub talking to some flaxen barmaid with a tuppeny 
cigar between his teeth. Still, Mr. Thripp refused to 
entertain more than a glimpse of this possibility. He 
saw him at this moment as clearly as if in a peepshow, 
packed in with hundreds of other male creatures close as 
sardines in a tin, with their check caps and their “fags,” 
and their staring eyes revolving in consort as if they 
were all attached to one wire, while that idiotic ball in 
the middle of the arena coursed on its helpless way from 
muddy boot to muddy boot. 

Heaven knows, Mr. Thripp himself was nothing much 
better than a football! ‘You had precious small chance 
in this life of choosing which boot should give you the 
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next kick. And what about that smug new creeping 
accountant at the office with his upstart airs and new- 
fangled book-keeping methods! 

Mr. Thripp’s mouth opened in a yawn, but managed 
only to achieve a fraction of it. He rubbed his face; 
his eyes now shut again. It was not as if any of your 
children were of much practical help. Why should they 
be when they could never understand that what you 
pined for, what you really needed was not only practical 
help but some inward grace and clearness of mind where- 
with they could slip in under your own thoughts and so 
share your point of view without all that endless terrify- 
ing argumentation. He didn’t always give advice to suit 
his own ends; and yet whenever he uttered a word to 
James, tactfully suggesting that in a world like this— 
however competent a man may be and however sure of 
himself—you had to push your way, you had to make 
your weight felt, James always looked at him as if he 
were a superannuated orang-outang in a cage—an orang- 
outang with queer and not particularly engaging habits. 

He wouldn’t mind even that so much if only James 
would take his cigarette out of his mouth when he talked. 
To see that bit of stained paper attached to his son’s 
lower lip wagging up and down, beneath that complacent 
smile and those dark helpless-looking eyes, all but sent 
Mr. Thripp stark staring mad at times. Once, indeed, 
he had actually given vent to the appalling mass of emo- 
tion hoarded up like water in a reservoir in his mind. 
The remembrance of the scene that followed made him 
even at this moment tremble in his chair. Thank God, 
thank God, he hadn’t often lost control like that. 

Well, James would be married by this time next year, 

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he supposed. And what a nice dainty pickle he was con- 
cocting for himself! Mr. Thripp knew that type of 
young woman, with the compressed lips, and the thin dry 
hair, and the narrow hips. She’d be a “good manager,” 
right enough, but that’s a point in married life where 
good managing is little short of being in a lunatic asylum 
between two iron-faced nurses and yourself in a strait 
waistcoat. The truth of it was, with all his fine airs 
and neat finish, James hadn’t much common-sense. He 
had a fair share of brains; but brains are no good if you 
are merely self-opinionated and contemptuous on prin- 
ciple. James was not like anybody in Mr. Thripp’s own 
family. He was a Simpkins. 

And then suddenly it was as if some forgotten crea- 
ture in Mr. Thripp’s mind or heart had burst out crying; 
and the loving look he thereupon cast on his elder son’s 
face in his mind was almost maudlin in its sentimentality. 
He would do anything for James within reason: any- 
thing. But then it would have to be within James’s 
reason—not his own. He knew that. Why he would 
himself marry the young woman and exult in being a 
bigamist if only he could keep his son out of her way. 
And yet, and yet; maybe there were worse women in 
the world than your stubborn, petulant, niggardly, half- 
sexed nagger. Mr. Thripp knew a nagger of old. His 
brother’s wife, Fanny, had been a nagger. She was 
dead now, and George was a free man—but drinking far 
too much. 

Well, as soon as he could get a chance, Mr. Thripp, 
sitting there in his chair decided, he would have another 
good think; but that probably wouldn’t be until next Sat- 
urday, if then. You can’t think to much purpose—ex- 
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cept in a worried disjointed fashion—when you are in 
the noise of an office or .keeping yourself from saying 
things you have no wish to say. The worst of it was it 
was not much good discussing these matters with Tilda. 
Like most women, she always went off at a tangent. And 
when you came down to it, and wanted to be reasonable, 
there was so little left to discuss. Besides, Tilda had 
worries enough of her own. 

At this moment Mr. Thripp once more opened his eyes 
wide. The small kitchen loomed beatifically rosy and still 
in the glow of the fire. Evening had so far edged on its 
way now that he could hardly see the hands of his two 
clocks. He could but just detect the brass pendulum— 
imperturbably chopping up eternity into fragments of 
time. He craned forward; in five minutes he ought to 
be brewing his little private pot of tea. Even if he 
nodded off now, he would be able to wake in time, but 
five minutes doesn’t leave much margin for dropping off. 
He shifted a little on his chair, and once more shut his 
eyes. And in a moment or two his mind went completely 
blank. 

He seemed to have been suddenly hauled up helpless 
with horror into an enormous vacancy—to be dangling un- 
confined and motionless in space. A scene of wild sandy 
hills and spiky trees—an illimitable desert, came riding 
towards him out of nothingness. He hung motionless, 
and was yet sweeping rapidly forward, but for what pur- 
pose and to what goal there was not the smallest inkling. 
The wilderness before him grew ever more desolate and 
menacing. He began to be deadly afraid ; groaned; stirred 
—and found himself with fingers clenched on its arms 
sitting bolt upright in his chair. And the hands of the 

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clock looked to be by a hair’s breadth precisely in the 
same position as when he had started on that ghastly 
nightmare journey. His face blanched. He sat ap- 
palled, listening to an outrageous wauling of voices. It 
was as though a thousand demons lay in wait for him 
beneath his window and were summoning him to his 
doom. 

And all this nightmare horror of mind was due solely 
to a wailing of cats! And yet even as with flesh still 
creeping he listened on to this clamour, it was so human 
in effect that it might be multitudinous shades of the 
unborn that were thronging about the glass of his win- 
dow. Mr. Thripp rose from his chair, his face trans- 
figured with rage and desire for revenge. He went out 
into the scullery, opened the back door, and at sound of 
him the caterwauling instantly ceased. 

And almost as instantly his fury died out in him. The 
cold evening air fanned his forehead. He smiled quix- 
otically, and looked about him. ‘There came a furtive 
rustle in the bushes. ‘Ah, there you are!” he sang out 
gently into the dark. “Have your play while you can, 
my fine gentlemen! Take it like your betters, for it’s 
—a sight too soon over.” 

Above the one cramped leafless elder-tree in his yard 
a star was pricking the sky. A ground mist, too, was 
rising, already smelling a little stale. Great London and 
its suburbs appeared to be in for one of its autumnal 
fogs. A few of the upper windows opposite loomed dim 
with light. Mr. Thripp’s neighbours, it seamed, were 
also preparing to be off to the pictures or the music-halls. 
It was very still, and the air was damp and clammy. 

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As he stood silent there in the obscurity a deepening 
melancholy crept over his mind, though he was unaware 
into what gloomy folds and sags his face had fallen. 
He suddenly remembered that his rates would have to 
be paid next week. He remembered that Christmas 
would soon be coming, and that he was getting too old 
to enter into the fun of the thing as he used to do. His 
eyes rolled a little in their sockets. What the... ! 
his old friend within began to suggest. But Mr. Thripp 
himself did not even enunciate the missing “hell.” In- 
stead, he vigorously rubbed his face with his stout capable 
hand. “Well, fog anyhow don’t bring rain,’ he mut- 
tered to himself. 

And as if at a signal his own cat and his nextdoor 
neighbour’s cat and Mrs. Brown’s cat and the cat of the 
painter and decorator whose back garden abutted his own, 
together with the ginger-and-white cat from a news- 
vendor’s beyond, with one consent broke out once more 
into their Sabbath eve quintette. The many-stranded 
strains of it mounted up into the heavens like the yells 
of demented worshippers of Baal. 

“And, as I say, I don’t blame ye neether,” Mr. Thripp 
retorted, with a grim smile. “If you knew, my friends, 
how narrowly you some of you escaped a bucket of cold 
water when you couldn’t even see out of your young eyes, 
you’d sing twice as loud.” 

He shut the door and returned to his fireside. No 
more hope of sleep that afternoon. He laughed to him- 
self for sheer amusement at his disappointment. What 
kids men were! He stirred the fire; it leapt brightly as 
if intent to please him. He pushed the kettle on; lit the 


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lamp; warmed his little privy glossy-brown teapot, and 
fetched out a small private supply of the richest Ceylon 
from behind some pots in the saucepan cupboard, 

Puffs of steam were now vapouring out of the spout 
of the kettle with majestic pomposity. Mr. Thripp 
lifted it off the coals and balanced it over his teapot. And 
at that very instant the electric bell—which a year or 
two ago in a moment of the strangest caprice Charles had 
fixed up in the corner—began jangling like a fire-alarm. 
Mr. Thripp hesitated. If this was one of the family, he 
was caught. Caught, that is, unless he was mighty quick 
in concealing these secret preparations. If it was Tilda 
—well, valour was the better part of discretion. He 
poured the water into the pot, replaced the lid, and put 
it on to the oventop to stew. With a glance of satisfac- 
tion at the spinster-like tidiness of the room, he went 
out, and opened the door. 

“Why, it’s Millie!” he said, looking out at the slim- 
shouldered creature standing alone there under the 
porch; “you don’t mean to say it’s you, my dear?” 

Millie made no reply. Her father couldn’t see her 
face, partly because the lamp-post stationed in front of 
the house three doors away gave at best a feeble light, 
and partly because her features were more or less con- 
cealed by her hat. She pushed furtively past him without 
a word, her head still stooping out of the light. 

Oh, my God, what’s wrong now? yelled her father’s 
inward monstrous monitor, frenziedly clanging the fet- 
ters on wrist and ankle. “Come right in, my pretty 
dear,” said Mr. Thripp seductively, “this is a pleasant 
surprise. And what’s more, between you and me and 
the gatepost, I have just been «making myself a cup of 
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tea. Not a word-to mother; its our little secret. We'll 
have it together before the others come in.” 

He followed his daughter into the kitchen. 

“Lor, what a glare you are in, pa!” she said in a small 
muffled voice. She turned the wick of the lamp down so 
low that in an instant or two the flame flickered and ex- 
pired, and she seated herself in her father’s chair by the 
fire. But the flamelight showed her face now. It was 
paler even than usual. A strand of her gilded pale-brown 
hair had streaked itself over her blue-veined temple. 
She looked as if she had been crying. Her father, his 
hands hanging down beside him as uselessly as the front 
paws of a performing bear, watched her in an appalling 
trepidation of spirit. This then was the secret of his 
nightmare; for this the Cats of Fate had chorused! 

“What’s wrong, Millie love? Are you overtired, my 
girl? There! Don’t say nothing for a minute or two. 
See, here’s my little pot just meant for you and me!” 

Millie began to cry again, pushing her ridiculous little 
handkerchief close to her eyes. Mr. Thripp’s hand 
hovered awkwardly above her dainty hat and then gently 
fumbled as if to stroke her hair beneath. He knelt down 
beside her chair. 

For heaven’s sake! for heaven’s sake! for heaven’s 
sake! a secret voice was gabbling frenziedly in his ear. 
“Tell your old dad, lovey,” he murmured out loud, softly 
as the crooning of a wood-pigeon. 

Millie tilted back her pretty hat and dropped her fair 
head on his shoulder. “It’s nothing, dad,” she said. 
“It’s only that they are all the same.” 

“What are all the same?” 

“Oh, fellows, dad.” 


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“Which one, precious?” Mr. Thripp lulled wooingly. 
God strike him dead! muttered his monster. 

“Oh, only young Arthur. Like a fool I waited half 
an hour for him and then saw him with—with that West- 
cliff girl.” 

A sigh as voluminous as the suspiration of Niagara 
swept over Mr. Thripp; but it made no sound. Half a 
dozen miraculous words of reassurance were storming 
his mind in a frenzy of relief. He paused an instant, 
and accepted the seventh. 

“What’s all that, my precious?” he was murmuring. 
“Why, when I was courting your mother, I saw just the 
same thing happen. She was a mighty pretty young 
thing, too, as a girl, though not quite so trim and neat 
in the figure as you. I felt I could throttle him where 
he stood. But no, I just took no notice, trusting in my 
own charms!” 

“That’s all very well,” sobbed Millie, “but you were 
a man, and we have to fight without seeming to. Not 
that I care a fig for him: he can go. But s 

“Lord, Millie!’ Mr. Thripp interrupted, smoothing her 
cheek with his squat forefinger, “you’d beat twenty of 
them Westcliffs, with a cast in both eyes and your hands 
behind your back. Don’t you grieve no more, my dear; 
he’ll come back safe and sound, or he’s less of a—of a 
nice young feller than I take him for.” 

For a moment Mr. Thripp caught a glimpse of the 
detestable creature with the goggling eyes and the suéde 
shoes, but he dismissed him sternly from view. 

“There now,” he said, “give your poor old dad a kiss. 
What’s disappointments, Millie; they soon pass away. 
And now, just take a sip or two of this extra-strong 
172 





The Nap 


Bohay! I was hoping I shouldn’t have to put up with a 
lonely cup and not a soul to keep me company. But mind, 
my precious, not a word to your ma.” 

So there they sate, father and daughter, comforter and 
comforted, while Mr. Thripp worked miracles for two 
out of a teapot for one. And while Millie, with heart 
comforted, was musing on that other young fellow she 
had noticed boldly watching her while she was waiting 
for her Arthur, Mr. Thripp was wondering when it would 
be safe and discreet to disturb her solacing daydream so 
that he might be busying himself over the supper. 

“It’s one dam neck-and-neck worry and trouble after 
another, his voice was assuring him. But meanwhile, his 
plain square face was serene and gentle as a nestful of 
halcyons, as he sat sipping his hot water and patting his 
pensive Millie’s hand. 


173 


Pretty Poll 


N her odd impulsive fashion—her piece 
of sewing pressed tight to her small 
bosom, her two small feet as close to one 
another on the floor—Judy had laughed 
out: and the sound of it had a faint far- 
away resemblance of bells—bells mutf- 
fled, in the sea. “You never, never, never speak of 
marriage,” she charged Tressider, “without being satiri- 
cal. You just love to make nonsense of us all. Now 
I say you have no right to. You haven’t earned the privi- 
lege. Wait till you’ve jilted Cleopatra, or left your 
second-best bed to—to Catherine Parr—if she was the 
last. Don’t you agree, Stella?” 

The slight lifting at the corners of dark handsome 
Stella’s mouth could hardly have been described as a smile. 
“I always agree,” she assented. “And surely, Mr. Tres- 
sider, isn’t marriage an ‘institution’? Mightn’t you just as 
well attack a police-station? No one gets any good out 
of it. It only hurts.” 

“That’s just it, Stella, it only hurts. It’s water, after 
all, that has the best chance of wearing away stones—not 
horrid sledge-hammers like that.” 

From his low chair, his cleft clean-shaven chin resting 
on his hands, Tressider for a moment or two continued 
to look up and across the room at Judy, now absorbedly 


174 





Pretty Poll 


busy again over her needlework. Time, too, wears like 
water; but little of its influence was perceptible there. 
The curtains at the French windows had been left un- 
drawn; a moon was over the garden. It was Judy’s 
choice—this mingling of the two lights—natural and arti- 
ficial. Hers, too, the fire, this late summer evening. 
She stooped forward, thrusting out a slightly trembling 
hand towards its flames. 

“No, it isn’t fair,” she said, “there are many married 
people who are at least, well endurably happy: Bull and 
me, for example. The real marvel is that any two ig- 
norant chance young things who happen to be of opposite 
sex should ever just go on getting older and older, more 
and more used to one another, and all that—and yet not 
want a change—not really for a single instant. I knew 
dozens—apart from the others.” 

“Oh, I never meant to suggest that ‘whited’ are the 
only kind of sepulchres,” said Tressider. “I agree, too, 
it’s the substantial that wears longest. Second-best beds; 
rather than Wardour Street divans. But there are ex- 
cesses—just human ones, I mean. It’s this horrible curse 
of asking too much. Up there they seem to have sup- 
posed that the best ratio for a human being was one 
quart of feeling to every pint pot. I knew a man once, 
for example, who, quite apart from such little eurekas as 
the Dunmow flitch, never even made the attempt to be- 
come endurably happy, as you call it. Simply because 
of aparrot. It repeated things. It was an eavesdropper: 
an agent provocateur.” 

“What do you mean?” said Judy. “Oh, how you 
amuse me! You haven’t said a single thing this evening 
that was not ironical. You just love to masquerade. 


175 


Pretty Poll 


Did you ever know a woman who talked parables? It’s 
simply because, I suppose, men have such stupidly self- 
conscious hearts—I mean such absurdly rational minds. 
Isn’t it, Stella? Don’t be so reserved, you dark taciturn 
angel. Wouldn’t he be even nicer than he is if he would 
only say what he thinks? A parrot!’ 

Stella merely desisted from shrugging her shoulders. 
“My own opinion, Judy—judging, that is, from what 
Mr. Tressider does say, is that it’s far better that he 
should never say what he thinks.” 

As if itself part and parcel of Stella’s normal tacitur- 
nity, this voice of hers, when it did condescend to make 
itself heard, was of a low rasping timbre, like the sound 
of a strip of silk being torn from its piece. And it 
usually just left off, came to an abrupt end—as if in- 
terrupted. She turned her head out of the candle-light, 
as though even moonshine might be a refuge from the 
mere bare facts of the case. There was a pause. Judy 
had snatched her glance, and was now busily fishing in 
her work-basket for her tiny scissors. 

“Well, that’s what I say,” she said, staring close at 
the narrow hem of the ludicrously tiny shirt she was hem- 
ming. ‘You men love to hide your heads in the sands. 
Even Bill does—and you know what a body he leaves out- 
side. You positively prefer not to know where you are. 
You invent ideals and goddesses and all that sort of 
thing; and yet you would sooner let things slide than— 
than break the ice. J mean—lI mean, of course, the right 
ice. That can’t be helped, I suppose. But what I simply 
cannot understand is being satirical. Here we all are, 
we men and women, and we just have to put up with it. 
In heaven,” and the tiny click, click, click of her needle © 
176 


Pretty Poll 


had already begun again, “in heaven there will be neither 
marriage nor giving in marriage. And poor Bill will 
have to—have to darn his socks himself.” 

Her eyes lifted an instant, and glanced away so swiftly 
that it seemed to Tressider he caught no less fleeting a 
glimpse of their blue than that usually afforded of a 
kingfisher’s wing. “But what,’ she went on hastily, 
“what about the parrot—the agent provocateur? What 
about the parrot, Stella? lLet’s make him tell us about 
the parrot.” 

“Yes,” concurred Stella. “I should, of course, very 
much indeed enjoy hearing about the parrot. I just love 
natural history.” 

“You ought really, of course,” said Tressider, “to have 
heard the story from a friend of my sister Kate’s—Minnie 
Sturgess. It was she who was responsible for the tragic 
—the absurd—finale. It was she who cut the tether, or 
rather the painter. The kind of woman that simply can’t 
take things easy. Intuitions, no end; but mostly of a 
raw hostile order. Anyhow, they weren’t of much use 
in the case of a man like—well, like my friend with the 
parrot.” 

“We will call him Bysshe,” said Judy. “It has ro- 
mantic associations. Go on, Mr. Satirist.” 

“Bysshe, then,” said Tressider. “Well, this Bysshe 
was a lanky, square-headed, black-eyed fellow. Some- 
thing, I believe, in the ship-broking line, though with a 
little money of his own. A bit over thirty, and a bachelor 
from the thatch on his head to the inch-thick soles of his 
shoes. If his mother had lived—he was one of those 
‘mother’s boys’ which the novelists used to be so fond of 
—Minnie Sturgess might perhaps herself have survived 


177 


Pretty Poll 


into his life, to keep, and, I wouldn’t mind betting, even 
to prize the parrot. She would at any rate have learned 
the tact with which to dispose of it without undue fric- 
tion. Minnie survived, in actual fact, to keep a small 
boarding-house at Ramsbate, though whether she is there 
now only the local directory could relate. As for Bysshe 
—well, I don’t know, as a matter of fact, how long he 
survived. In Kate’s view, the two of them were born 
to make each other unhappy. So Providence, to cut 
things short, supplied the parrot. But then Kate is some- 
thing of a philosopher. And I have no views my- 
self.” 

“Did you ever see the parrot?” queried Judy, her left 
eye screwed up a little as she threaded an almost invisible 
needle. “I remember an old servant of my mother’s 
once had one, and it used to make love to her the very 
instant it supposed they were alone. But she, poor soul, 
wasn’t too bright in her wits.” 

“Oh,” said Tressider, “Bysshe was right enough in his 
wits. It was merely one of his many queer harmless 
habits—and he had plenty of spare time left over from 
his ship-broking—to moon about the city. He suffered 
from indigestion, or thought he did, and used to lunch 
on apples or nuts which, so far as he was concerned, did 
not require for their enjoyment a sitting posture. He was 
a genuine lover of London, though; knew as much about 
its churches and streets, taverns and relics as old Stowe 
or Pepys himself. Possibly, too, if his digestion ‘had 
been a reasonable one, Minnie and he might have made 
each other’s lives miserable to the end of the chapter; 
since in that case, he would never have found himself 
loafing about one particular morning in Leadenhall Mar- 
178 


Pretty Poll 


ket; and so would never have set eyes on the parrot. 
Anyhow, that’s how it all began. 

“It was a sweltering day—clear black shadows, black 
as your hat, shafting clean across the narrow courts, 
and the air crammed with flavours characteristic of those 
parts—meat, poultry, sawdust, cats, straw, soot, and old 
bricks baking in the sun. He had meandered into one 
of the livestock alleys—mainly dogs, cats, poultry, with 
an occasional jackdaw, owl or raven. That kind of 
thing. And there, in a low entry, lounged the proprietor 
of one of its shops—a man with a face and head as hair- 
less almost as a bladder of lard, and with eyes like a 
ferret. 

“He was two steps up from the pavement, had a straw 
in the corner of his mouth, and was looking at Bysshe. 
And Bysshe was looking at one of his protégés, the edge 
of its cage glinting in a sunbeam, and the bird—or what- 
ever you like to call it—mum and dreaming inside. Bys- 
she had finished his lunch, and was in a reflective mood. 
He stared on at the parrot almost to the point of va- 
cancy. 

“ “Nice dawg there,’ insinuated an insolent voice above 
his head. 

“He looked up, and for a moment absently surveyed the 
speaker. ‘Does it talk?’ enquired Bysshe. The owner 
of the bird merely continued to chew his straw. 

““How do you teach them? Bysshe persisted. ‘You 
clip or snip their tongues, or something, don’t you?’ 

“An intensely violent look came into the fellow’s eyes. 
‘If you was to try to slit that bird’s tongue,’ he said, ‘you 
might as well order your corfin here and now.’ 

“Bysshe’s glance returned to the cage. Apart from 


179 


Pretty Poll 


an occasional almost imperceptible obscuring of its scale- 
like shuttered eyes, its inmate might just as well have 
been stuffed. It sat there stagnantly surveying Bysshe 
as if he were one of the less intelligent apes. To start 
with, Bysshe didn’t much like the look of the man. 
Naturally. Nor did he much like the look of the parrot. 
It was merely the following of an indolent habit that 
suggested his asking its price. 

“He once more turned his attention from wizard-like 
bird to beast-like man. ‘What’s the price of the thing?’ 
he enquired: ‘and if I particularly wanted him to talk, 
could you make him?’ The man rapidly shifted his 
straw from one corner of his mouth to the other. 

“*The feller,’ he replied, ‘that says that he could make 
that bird do anything but give up the ghost, is a liar.’ 

“Bysshe, when he told me about the deal, supplied the 
missing adjective. Still, such is life. The price was 
25s. And as Bysshe had no more idea of the bird’s value 
than that of an Egyptian pyramid, he didn’t know whether 
he was getting a bargain or not. Nor did he attempt to 
beat the man down. He asked him a few questions about 
the proper food and treatment of the creature. Where- 
upon, squeezing one or two of his remaining lunch nuts 
between the bars, he picked up the cage by its ring, turned 
out of the shadowy coolness of the market into the burn- 
ing glitter of Leadenhall Street, mounted on to the top 
of a ’bus, and bore his captive home. 

“He had rooms in Clifford’s Inn; and through the win- 
dow the bird, if it so pleased, could feast its eyes on the 
greens and shadows of a magnificent plane-tree. The 
rooms were old—faded yellow panelling and a moulded 
cornice. It was quiet. Bysshe had few friends, and his 
180 


Pretty Poll 


pet therefore could have enjoyed—even if it wanted any 
—little company. Bysshe bought it a handsome new cage, 
with slight architectural advantages, and was as per- 
fectly ready to enjoy its silent society as he expected 
the bird to be prepared to enjoy his.” 

Stella gently withdrew her dark eyes from the moon- 
lit garden, and stole a longish look at Tressider’s face. 

“T agree, Stella,’ cried Judy breaking it. “He is be- 
ing rather a long time coming to what I suppose will be 
the point.” 

“So are most little human tragedies,” retorted Tres- 
sider. “But there’s one point I have left out. I said 
‘silent’ society ; and that at first was all Bysshe got. But 
I gathered that though there had been the usual din in 
the market the day of the bargain, it was some odd non- 
descript slight sound or other that had first caught his 
attention. A kind of call-note which appeared to have 
come out of the cage. Without being quite conscious 
of it, it seems to have been this faint rumour, at least as 
much as anything else, that persuaded him to invest in 
the bird. 

' “Well, anyhow, as he sat reading one evening—he 
had rather an odd and esoteric taste in books—there 
proceeded out of the cage one or two clear disjointed 
notes. Just a fragment of sound to which you could 
give no description or character except that it was un- 
like most of those which one expects from a similar 
source. Bysshe had instantly relapsed from one stage 
of stillness to another. Compared with what came after, 
this was nothing—mere ‘recording’ as the bird-fanciers 
say. But it set Bysshe on the qui vive. For a while he 
listened intently. There was no response. And he had 

181 


Pretty Poll 


again almost forgotten the presence of the parrot when, 
hours afterwards, from the gloom that had crept into 
its corner, there softly broke out of the cage, no mere 
snatch of an inarticulate bel canto, but a low, slow, steady 
gush of indescribable abuse. 

“The courtyard was as still as the garden of Eden. 
That less—that more—than human voice pressed steadily 
on—a low, minute, gushing fountain of vituperation. 
Bysshe was no chicken. He was pretty familiar with the 
various London lingoes—from Billingsgate to Soho. 
None the less the actual terms of this harangue, he after- 
wards told me, all but froze the blood in his veins. The 
voice ceased; and turning his head, Bysshe took a long 
and steady stare at the inmate of the cage. It sat there in 
its gray and cardinal; its curved beak closed, its glassy 
yellow eye motionless, and yet, it seemed, filled to its 
shallow brim with an inexhaustible contempt. 

“There was nothing whatever wrong with its surround- 
ings. Bysshe made quite certain of that. Its nuts were 
ripe and sound, its water fresh, its sand wholesome. As 
I say, at the first onset of this experience Bysshe had 
been profoundly shocked. But that night, as he stood 
in his pyjamas looking in at the bird for the last time 
—and he had omitted to throw over its cage its customary 
pall—the memory of it suddenly touched his sense of 
humour. And he began to laugh; an oddish laugh to 
laugh alone. The parrot lifted one clawed foot and 
gently readjusted it on its perch. It leaned its head side- 
long; its beak opened. And then in frozen silence it 
turned its back on the interrupter. 

“For days together after that the parrot was as mute 
as a fish—at least so long as Bysshe lay in wait for it. 
182 


Pretty Poll 


That it had been less taciturn in his absence he gathered 
one morning from the expression of his charwoman’s 
face—an amiable old body with a fairly wide knowledge 
of ‘the world.’ She had thought it best, she explained, to 
shut the windows. ‘You never know, sir, what them 
might think who couldn’t tell a canary from a bullfinch. 
I’ve kept birds myself. But I must say, sir, I wouldn’t 
have chose to be brought up where he was.” Something 
to that effect. 

“And Bysshe noticed that though she had not re- 
frained from putting some little emphasis on the ‘he,’ she 
had carefully omitted any indication to whom the pronoun 
referred. 

““Fe swore, did he, Mrs. Giles?’ 

““He didn’t so much swear, sir, as extravastate. 
Never in all my life could I have credited there was such 
shocking things to say.’ 

“Bysshe rather queerly returned the old lady’s gaze. 
‘I have heard rumours of it myself,’ he replied. ‘It looks 
to me, Mrs. Giles, as if we should have to get the bird an- 
other home.’ 

“The interview was a little disconcerting, but had it 
not been for this independent evidence, Bysshe, I feel sure 
(judging from my own reactions, as they call them) might 
easily have persuaded himself to believe that his experi- 
ence had been nothing but the refuse of a dream. 

“Minnie Sturgess’s first appearance on the scene pre- 
ceded mine by a few days. The two of them, so far as 
I could gather, were not exactly ‘engaged.’ They merely, 
as the little irony goes, understood one another; or 
rather Minnie seemed so far to understand Bysshe that we 
all knew perfectly well they would at last drift into matri- 

183 


Pretty Poll 


mony as inevitably as a derelict boat, I gather, having 
found its way out of Lake Erie will drift over the Niagara 
Falls.” 

“A very pretty metaphor,’ remarked Judy. “Then 
come the rapids, and then—but I’m not quite sure what 
happens then.” 

“Don’t forget, though,” cried Stella softly out of her 
moonshine, “don’t forget that meanwhile the best electric 
light has been supplied for miles around!” 

“Ssh! Stella,’ breathed Judy, thimbled finger on lip, 
“we are merely playing into his hands. Let him just 
blunder on.” She turned with a mock-innocent smile 
towards Tressider. “And did the parrot swear at Miss 
Sturgess?” she enquired. 

“No. Miss Sturgess came; she contemplated; she 
admired; she was tactful to the last degree. But the 
bird paid her no more polite attention than if she had been 
a waxwork in the basement at Madame Tussaud’s. It 
sat perfectly still on its perch, its eight neat claws ar- 
ranged four on either side of it, and out of its whitish 
countenance it softly surveyed the lady. 

“Naturally, she was a little nettled. She remon- 
strated. Hadn’t Bysshe assured her that the creature 
talked, and wasn’t it a horrid cheat to have a parrot sold 
to one for all that money, if it didn’t? And Bysshe, re- 
lieved beyond words, that his pet had not even so much 
as deigned to chuckle, prevaricated. He said that a par- 
rot that talked in season and out of season was nothing 
but a nuisance. Did she like its livery, and wasn’t it a 
handsome cage?” 

“Miss Sturgess took courage. She bent her veiled head 
and whispered a seductive ‘Pretty Poll’; and then having 
184 


Pretty Poll 


failed to arouse any response by tapping its bars with 
the button of her glove, she insinuated a naked fore- 
finger between them as if to stroke the creature’s wing 
or to scratch its poll. And, without an instant’s hesita- 
tion the parrot nipped it to the bone. She might have 
read that much in its air: intuition, you know. But she 
was a plucky creature, and didn’t even whimper. And 
no doubt for the moment this summary punishment may 
seem to have drawn these two blundering humans a little 
closer together. 

“It was a few days after this that Bysshe and I lunched 
together at a restaurant in Fleet Street. And, naturally 
—in his reticent fashion—he told me of his prize. About 
three, we climbed the shallow wooden stairs up to his 
rooms, to see the bird. For discretion’s sake—in case, 
that is, of chance visitors, he had shut it up in his bed- 
room, and rather foolishly, as I thought, had locked the 
door. 

“No creature of any intelligence can much enjoy exis- 
tence in a cage, and to immure that cage in a kind of cell 
is merely to add insult to injury. Besides, even eigh- 
teenth century door panels are not sound-proof. We 
stole across on tiptoe and stood for a moment listening 
outside the bedroom. 

“Possibly the bird had heard our muffled footsteps; or, 
maybe, to while solitude away, it was merely indulging in 
an audible reverie. J can’t say. But hardly had we 
inclined our ears to listen, when, as if out of some vast 
hollow, dark and subterranean, a tongue within—un- 
falteringly, dispassionately—broke into speech. I have 
heard politicians, pill-venders and demagogues, but nothing 
even remotely to compare with that appalling eloquence 


185 


Pretty Poll 


—the ease, the abundance, the sustained unpremeditated 
verve! Nor was it an exhibition of mere vernacular. 
There were interludes, as I guessed, of a corrupt Spanish. 
There may have been even an oriental leaven; even traces 
of the Zulu’s ‘click’—the trend was exotic enough. But 
the words, the mere language were as nothing compared 
with the tone. : 

“Curates habituated to their duties tend to read the 
prayers in much the same way. The inmost sense, | 
mean, comes out the better because the speaker is not 
taking any notice of it. So it was with the parrot. I 
can’t describe the evil of the effect. One stopped think- 
ing. One lost for the moment even the power of being 
shocked. A torrent of outer darkness seemed to sweep 
over, dowse, submerge the mind, and you just floated like 
a straw on its calm even flood.” 

“What was it swearing about?” asked a cold voice. 

Tressider seemed to be examining the Persian mat at 
his feet as if in search of inspiration: “I think,” he said 
slowly, “it was cursing the day of creation, with all the 
complexities involved in it. It was a voice out of no- 
where, anathematising with loathing a very definite some- 
where. We most of us ‘bear up’ in this world as much 
as possible. Not so the original owner of that unhurried 
speech. He had stated with perfect calm exactly what 
he thought about things. And I should guess that his 
name was Iago. Buf let’s get back to Bysshe. 

“At the moment he was holding his square, rather ugly 
face sidelong, in what looked like a constrained position. 
Then his eyes slid round and met mine. 

“ “Twenty-five shillings! he said. ‘Any offers? But 
there wasn’t anything facetious in his look. 


186 


Pretty Poll 


“The voice had ceased. And with it had vanished all 
else but the remembrance of the execrable tone of its 
speech. And as if all Nature, including its topmost ar- 
tifice, London, had paused to listen, there followed an 
intense hush. ‘Then, uncertainly, as if tentatively, there 
broke out another voice from behind the shut door, utter- 
ing just three or four low single notes—as of somebody 
singing. Then these ceased too. 

“We had both of us been more or less prepared for 
the captive’s first effort, but not I for this. This extraor- 
dinary scrap of singing—but I'll come back to it. Bysshe 
gently unlocked and pushed open his bedroom door and 
we looked in. But we knew perfectly well what we 
should find. The room was undisturbed, and, except for 
its solitary inmate, vacant. There stood Bysshe’s truckle 
bed, his old tallboy, his empty boots, his looking-glass. 
And there sat the bird, motionless, unabashed, clasping 
its perch with its lizard-skinned claws. Apart from a 
slight trembling of its breast-plumage, there was no symp- 
tom whatever of anything in the least unwonted. It 
sidled the fraction of an inch towards its master, its beak 
ajar showing the small clumsy tongue, its bead-like eye 
firmly settled on mine; and with a peculiar aversion I 
stared back. , 

“T stayed on with Bysshe for an hour or two, but 
though most of the time we sat in silence, like confederates 
awaiting their crucial moment, nothing happened. A sort 
of absentness, a slight frown, had settled on his face. 
And when at last I hurried off to keep some stupid ap- 
pointment, I might have guessed it was not merely to 
hear a parrot swear that he had pressed me to come. 
Afterwards, he was less eager to share his enchantress.” 

187 


4 
d 
4 
. 


Pretty Poll 


“The voice, you mean?” 

“Yes. Can you imagine the voice of the angel in the 
Leonardo Madonna ?—Oh well, never mind that now. A 
few weeks afterwards Bysshe looked me up again, and 
for a while we talked aimlessly and at random. He was 
obviously waiting for me to question him. 

““Oh, by the way, how much did you get?’ I enquired 
at last. He looked absolutely dead beat, his skin was a 
kind of muddy gray. It appeared that the tiny motif of 
my experience had been a mere prelude. Bysshe, it 
seems had awakened a week or two after my visit in the 
very earliest of the morning, at the very moment when 
from underneath the parrot’s pall had slipped solemnly 
out the complete aria. The words were not actually 
French, for he had detected something like ‘alone’ and 
‘grief.’ But here and there they had a slight nasal timbre, 
and Bysshe, drinking the fatal music in, lying there in his 
striped pyjamas still a little dazed with sleep, had simply 
succumbed. 

“He had succumbed to such a degree that his sole pre- 
posterous object in life now seemed to be that of tracing 
the bird’s ownership. Not his sole object, rather; for 
at every return from this preposterous quest, he spent 
hours in solitude, bent on the equally vain aim of dis- 
covering which in the divine order of things had come 
first: the invective or the charm. He had some notion 
that it mattered. 

“There is a bit, you remember, in one of Conrad’s 
novels about a voice—Lena’s. There is another bit in 
Shakespeare, and in Coleridge; in almost every poet, of 
course—but it doesn’t matter. Four notes had been 
enough for me. And even if Melba in her dreams de- 
188 


Pretty Poll 


lights the listening shades on the borders of Paradise— 
even they will not have heard the best that earth can do. 
You see there was nothing bird-like in the parrot’s piece, 
except the purity. It was the voice of a seraph, the voice 
of a marvellous fiddle (that bit of solo, for example, in 
Mozart’s Minuet in E flat). A voice innocent of the 
meaning—even of the degree—of its longing; innocent, I 
mean, of realising that life can’t really stand—if it could 
comprehend it—anything so abjectly beautiful as all that; 
that there’s a breaking-point. 

“Tt’s difficult even to suggest the effect. Absolutely 
the most beautiful thing in the world a cousin of mine 
once told me he had ever seen was from the top of a ’bus. 
He happened to glance into the dusk of an upper room 
through an open window, and a naked girl stood there, 
her eyes looking inward in a remote dream, her shift 
lifted a little above her small lovely head, as she was 
about to put it on. Well I suppose Bysshe’s experience 
resembled that. But there; J, mind you, heard only four 
notes of it. And now there are no more to come. And 
my cousin, lost in stupefaction or remorse, had kept im- 
movably to his ’bus.” 

Judy’s sewing lay for a moment idle in her lap; her 
\downcast eyes were fixed on it as if suddenly it had 
presented her with an insoluble problem. 

“But there was, of course, quite another—a farcical 
—side to the comedy,” Tressider pushed on. ‘Poor 
Bysshe’s pursuit proved as ludicrous as it looks amusing. 
When you come to think of it, you know, we make our 
own idols. A silence, a still look of the eyes, a crammed 
instant of oblivion, and we are what’s called ‘in love.’ 
What Stendhal calls crystallisation, doesn’t he? Queer. 


189 


Pretty Poll 


But it’s the same in everything. Not merely sex, I mean. 
And that, I suppose, is what happened to Bysshe. 

“Those slowish internal creatures crystallise hardest, 
perhaps. Out of this lost wandering voice he made— 
well, he embodied it. And the result wasn’t in the least 
like poor Minnie. There was now particular tragedy in 
that. For Bysshe, that is. But, just like him, he tried, 
as I say, to track the embodiment down. And how could 
he tell which he’d unearth first—angel or devil. Or— 
both together. Think of that. Anyhow, he completely 
failed. First, of course, he returned to the dealer in 
live stock, who extorted from him a larger sum than he 
had paid for the parrot, as a bribe to disclose where it 
had come from. After which Bysshe had at once hied off 
to a corn-chandler’s at Leytonstone—a talkative man. 

“This man had bought the bird from a customer to 
whom he sold weekly supplies of chicken-food and 
canary-seed—a maiden lady in a semi-detached villa 
neatly matted with ampelopsis V eitchi.” 

“How nice!’ said Judy in a hushed little voice—as 
if absent-minded. 

“Yes,” said Tressider. “When Bysshe at last asked 
her outright if the bird had ever talked while it was in 
her possession, a pink flush had spread over her face. 
She had herself tried to teach it, she told him, looking 
down her nose the while beneath her large gold-rimmed 
glasses: just ‘Scratch-a-poll’ or something of that kind. 
But she had failed. A seafaring nephew had presented 
her with the bird—a nephew of some little naivety, I 
should imagine. He had, she fancied, ‘picked it up’ in 
Portsmouth. 

“Tt talks a little now, Bysshe had confided to her. 


190 


Pretty Poll 


“And the lady had at once given her case away by re- 
taliating that what it might do in the small hours, or 
with only a gentleman present, was no concern of hers. 

“Then Bysshe asked if the parrot had ever engaged in 
song—‘like a bullfinch, you know.’ And the lady’s ex- 
pression implied that his question had confirmed her sus- 
picions of his sanity. 

“Portsmouth turned out another bad egg. He tracked 
down the shop, but the proprietor had died of dropsy a 
week before. Still, his daughter confessed that if the 
parrot was the parrot she had in mind—though she had 
never heard it talking in particular—then it may have 
been resident in the shop for something under a year. 
At this a ray of hope struck down on the squalid scene, 
and Bysshe enquired if the late proprietor had ever in- 
dulged in ‘musical evenings.’ 

“There was a young lady living not many doors down 
the street, he was informed, who taught the pianoforte, 
and who led a Mixed Methodist Choir. Bysshe had ac- 
cordingly spent the greater part of that evening beneath 
the young lady’s lighted window—providentially an inch 
or two ajar—while in successive keys she practised her 
scales. And for bonne bouche she had at last rewarded 
the eavesdropper with a rendering of ‘Hold the Fort’; 
but, alas, in tones of a pitch and volume which no mere 
mimic, feathered or otherwise, could hope to recapture. 

“Bysshe could get no further for the present. As I 
say, he never did. His parrot’s past had proved irrevo- 
cable. And apart from the hint of the prehistoric in all 
its species, even the age of this particular specimen re- 
mained a mystery. Destiny may, of course, have seduced 
it to that slum in Portsmouth from the Islands of the 


IQI 


Pretty Poll 


Blest. That would, at any rate, account for the critical 
side of its repertory. It may have taken flight clean out 
of a fairy-tale, leaving its rarer colours behind it. So 
at least one can imagine Snow-white singing over her 
bed-making in the house of the dwarfs. It may have 
had Belial for owner and then St. Lucy; or vice versa. 
It may have been a fallen Parrot. But it doesn’t matter. 

“The only point worth bothering about is that Bysshe 
couldn’t get its original out of his head—the original he 
had invented, I mean. Parrots don’t learn to sing or to 
swear in an afternoon. Positive months of intercourse 
must have been necessary even for a fowl as intelligent 
as that. And so, poor Bysshe lived in constant torture. 
Where was she now—this impossible She? And where 
and whose the tongue that seemed to be vocal of the very 
rot to which all things living in this delightful world are 
—well—doomed, you know? 

“Anyhow, Bysshe gave up the quest; and lived on in 
a iurious, implacable dream. ‘The one thing he couldn't 
do was to exorcise this ghost in him. He shut himself 
up in his chambers for days together, and the autumnal 
evenings rapidly lengthened. He existed in a condition 
of abject nausea of expectation; and in as abject a terror 
of having that expectation fulfilled. Nothing on earth 
would cajole or intimidate the bird, though Bysshe cursed 
it at one moment and at the next lavished upon it all 
the spices of the East. Cajoled it, I mean, to the extent 
of persuading it to embark on its programme unless the 
spirit moved it. 

“Tt’s an almost tragic thought too—for his loathing of 
the parrot now exceeded all bounds—that, far from re- 
turning these sentiments, the creature seemed to have 
192 


Pretty Poll 


fallen head over ears in love with his keeper. It would 
squat on its perch, muttering inarticulate endearments, or, 
sidling stealthily with beak and claw from base to key- 
stone of its dome-shaped cage, would ogle him with an 
eye as amorous and amiable as the dumb thing could make 
it. And only dumb things of course can ever really be 
in love. There’s a genuine pathos there, though Bysshe 
was immune to it. 

“And now, when the old black Stygian flood set in 
anew, the bird no longer swore at him; it swore with him. 
And it so dispersed its favours that Bysshe up to the 
very last was never able to settle with any certainty which 
part of its programme came first—the paradisal aria or 
the other. You couldn’t anticipate the creature. It 
chose its own moments—and these invariably unexpected. 
When gigantic storm-clouds were heaping themselves 
above the hill of the Strand, out of that menacing hush 
its amazing incantation would steal upon the air. In the 
balmiest hours of St. Martin’s summer, Bysshe would 
hurriedly spring to his windows to cut off the foul stream 
that came sliding out of that minute throat like the slug- 
gish lees of a volcanic eruption. 

“It was no good. You can’t pin down human nature. 
Luckily Bysshe did not depend on his ship-broking. If 
he had, his parrot would have put him in the Workhouse. 
It’s bad enough, so I am told, to fall in love with the 
tangible, with a creature owning a heart that you can 
at least believe in, or besiege, or at times hope to break. 
But to be infatuated by a second-hand voice and to share 
its decoy with the company of a friend possessing a tongue 
that might shock Beelzebub himselfi—well, that, I gather, 
is an even less pleasant experience.” 


193 


Pretty Poll 


Judy raised the hand that held her sewing, and gently 
rubbed her left cheek. The air was close in spite of the 
open window, and in spite of the cool-looking vaporous 
moonlight in which Stella continued to sit and soak. 
But neither seemed inclined to interrupt the interminable 
yarn. Indeed Tressider himself appeared to have grown 
a little tired of it. He half yawned. 

“There was nothing, you know,” he began again, with 
a more pronounced drawl in his voice; “there was nothing 
of course extremely exceptional in Bysshe’s parrot’s 
powers, except possibly the collusion. There are num- 
bers of historical parrots with a comparable repertory. 
There was the parrot for example, perfectly well ac- 
credited, that could recite a whole sonnet of Petrarch’s. 
There is the Grand Khan’s notorious cockatoo—though 
that was made of metal and precious stones. In France 
there are parrots that can reel off pages at a time of the 
academic dictionary. And there was the macaw that 
Luther despatched with his translation of the Bible. T’ll 
bet, too, Catherine Parr had a parrot—with a five-stringed 
lute. Whether or not; the rest is silence. 

“Minnie Sturgess naturally enough, poor thing, had 
been restless for weeks. The game in which she had 
never held any really decent cards she now saw slipping 
into fatuity. Bysshe was possessed. The assurance of 
that poisoned the very air she breathed. But possessed 
by what? By whom? She played on for a while, none 
the less, with all the courage and the skill she could mus- 
ter. Bysshe indeed was even taking a tonic of her pre- 
scription—some patent food or other, when I saw him 
again towards the end of October. It didn’t appear to 
be doing him much good. Knowing as I did the cause 


194 


Pretty Poll 


of this vacant somnambulism—that furtive vigilant stare 
of his as if from some living creature hiding far back in 
his eyes—the desperate change in his looks was almost 
ridiculous. 

““Why don’t you drown the wretched thing?’ I asked 
him. ‘It’s a machine—an automaton: and half-devilish 
at that.’ But the face he lifted to me, its ears almost 
visibly pricked up towards the lair of his seducer, was 
—well, I suppose you know what unrequited passion can 
make of a man.” 

“You really mean,’ cried Judy suddenly, needle in 
the air, “you really mean he was wasting away for the 
ghost of a voice?” 

Tressider looked at her across the room. Even a 
stranger would have noticed the peculiar stridency of 
her shocked tones. Its bells were out of tune. To 
judge from Tressider’s face, the telling of his story had 
tired him a good deal. 

“T mean,” he said, “things do happen like that. Though 
no doubt, as with John Keats, some ‘morbid affection’ 
helped. What are we all but ghosts—of something? 
And who’s telling this story for you, pray, but your 
ghost of me? All it comes to is that Bysshe kept on 
feeding his imagination, and the effort wore him down.” 

“Morbid affection!’’’ echoed Stella. “Why drag in 
the mortuary?” 

“And what,” gasped Judy, “and what did Miss Stur- 
gess do? Finally, I mean? And apart’ (and she added 
the words almost with a touch of bravado) “apart from 
the patent food, or medicine, or whatever it was?” 

“Miss Sturgess?” Tressider echoed. “She played her 
last card; and it was a poor card, played like that. You 


195 


Pretty Poll 


see, poor thing, her only possible hope was to discover 
somehow exactly how she stood, since Bysshe had be- 
come little but a sullen recluse. She scarcely saw him 
now, even though so far as J can tell, there had been no 
open rift or quarrel between them. One may assume she 
had been awaiting her opportunity; and I’m not attack- 
ing her intentions. And one evening—and, mind you, 
as the colder weather approached, and possibly because 
Bysshe (though he lavished other kinds of dainties on 
his parrot) was incapable of showing it any spiritual sym- 
pathy, the creature was growing more and more stagnant 
and morose—well, one evening he had slipped out to fetch 
himself, I think, a bottle of wine. He was sinking into 
a sheer inertia—from being goaded on and on. And 
while on this errand he seems to have had some kind of 
fainting attack. Not the first of the kind. This had 
entailed his sitting for half an hour or so in the nearest 
pub; for in these later days of his obsession he had prac- 
tically given up venturing further afield. All told, he 
couldn’t have been more than an hour away. 

“When he returned Minnie Sturgess was standing by 
the window in the farther corner of his room. There was 
still a trace of twilight in the sky and it illumined her 
set face near the glass. And something in that or in her 
attitude set him shivering. He asked her what was 
wrong; then noticed that her left hand was bound up, and 
very inadequately, with a handkerchief—one of his own. 

“She merely turned her head—and a stony one it must 
have appeared, I should imagine—and looked at him. 
He managed to ‘repeat his question. He asked her what 
was the matter. I gathered that she didn’t say very 
much in reply, only something to the effect that in fu- 
196 > 


Pretty Poll 


ture so far as she was concerned Bysshe was entirely at 
liberty to enjoy the delights of the company he had 
chosen, and which for some time past he had evidently 
preferred to hers. And that now at any rate he would 
no longer be taunted regarding it when it wasn’t there. 
She had a raucous voice, and it was, I gathered, a bit of 
feminine sarcasm; something like that. 

“And Bysshe knew pretty well what it meant. He 
knew that his voices, devilish and seraphic, were now for 
ever silent: that their murderess was there. He sat down 
without answering. Mad dogs’ teeth are notoriously 
dangerous, Miss Sturgess went on to remark; did Bys- 
she know if parrots’ were? And still, I gathered, he made 
no reply. He just sat there, paying no attention, as if al- 
most he had taken lessons in endurance from his late pet. 

“And then, his friend seems to have walked—or so 
at least I see her—in a kind of prowling semi-circle round 
him, with eyes fixed on his face, and so out of the door. 
And then down the echoing shallow wooden staircase, and 
into the cobbled courtyard, and under the thinning plane- 
tree, and out into London—en route, at last, poor soul, 
for the boarding-house in Ramsgate.” 

“And where did Bysshe bury the thing?’ enquired 
Stella, as if sick to death of being satirical. 

“T never asked him that,” said Tressider calmly. “Nor, 
so far as I have heard, did he ever catechise the desolate 
one regarding which precise item of the two counts of 
the indictment had induced her to wring the parrot’s 
neck. Probably the bel canto, for I don’t believe myself 
that a woman much cares what company the man she 
is in love with keeps provided that it is not too good for 
her.” 


197 


Pretty Poll 


At this, apparently, Judy had sat bolt upright in her 
chair, as if in sudden fear or anxiety. And at that pre- 
cise moment heavyish footsteps were heard without. 

“Hello,” inquired a bass, unctuous, yet hardly good- 
humoured voice, “when shall you three meet again?” 

It was Bill who stood in the doorway—Bill in his in- 
effable dinner-jacket and glossy shirt. And he all but 
filled it. He might almost have been a balloon, this Bull 
—tethered to the carpet there by his glossy patent-leather 
shoes—buoyant with gas. 

“He has been telling us a story about a parrot,” said 
Judy in a low voice, “who used very bad language.” 

“Has he?” said Bill. “Well, he ought to know better.” 
But his eye was almost as vacant as that of Bysshe’s pet. 
It wandered off to rest on Judy’s other guest, Stella. 
“And what did you think of it?” he said; “the bad man’s 
tale?” 

“Why,” said Stella, ‘I am a little too grown-up for 
fairy-tales. And as for morals; I can find my own.” 

“And you, Badroulbadour?” said Bill, widely smiling 
at his wife. 

“Me, Bill,’ echoed Judy firmly, her pretty cheeks 
flushed after her exertions. ‘‘Why, I have been think- 
ing that the tiny creature who’s going to wear this shirt 
has ventured into a rather difficult world.” 

“And who, may I ask, is the ‘tiny creature’ ?” drawled 
her husband, almost as though such a question could be 
a sarcasm. 

Tressider’s gaze was fixed vacantly on the scrap of 
sewing. He appeared to be entirely aloof from this little 
domestic catechism—seemed to have lost interest in the 
evening. 


198 


Pretty Poll 


“It’s for Mollie’s little boy. He was born about three 
days ago,” Judy said. 

But Stella, too, appeared to have lost interest. Though 
her face was in shadow, her eyes could still see the moon 
—a moon by its slightly cindrous light now betraying that 
it was soon to set. And to judge from her attitude and 
expression, this eventuality would bring her no regret, 
since, as it seemed in her darker moments, the moon of 
her own secret waters had long ago set for ever. 


199 


All Hallows 


“And because time in itself... can receive no altera- 
tion, the hallowing . . . must consist in the shape or coun- 
tenance which we put upon the affaires that are incident in 
these days.” 

RIcHARD HOOKER, 


IG T was about half-past three on an August 
~~ @\i| afternoon when I found myself for the 
first time looking down upon All Hal- 
lows. And at first glimpse of it, every 
vestige of fatigue and vexation passed 
away. I stood “at gaze,’ as the old 
phrase goes—like the two children of Israel sent in to 
spy out the Promised Land. How often the imagined 
transcends the real. Not so All Hallows. Having at 
last reached the end of my journey—flies, dust, heat, wind 
—having at last come limping out upon the green sea- 
bluff beneath which lay its walls—I confess the actuality 
excelled my feeble dreams of it. 

What most astonished me, perhaps, was the sense not 
so much of its age, its austerity, or even its solitude, but 
its air of abandonment. It lay couched there as if in 
its narrow sea-bay. Not a sound was in the air; not a 
jackdaw clapped its wings among its turrets. No other 
roof, not even a chimney, was in sight; only the dark- 
blue arch of the sky; the narrow snowline of the ebbing 
200 





All Hallows 


tide; and that gaunt coast fading away into the haze of 
a West over which were already gathering the veils of 
sunset. 

We had met then, at an appropriate hour and season. 
And yet—I wonder. For it was certainly not the 
“beauty” of All Hallows, lulled as if into a dream in 
this serenity of air and heavens, which was to leave the 
sharpest impression upon me. And what kind of first 
showing would it have made, I speculated, if an autumnal 
gale had been shrilling and trumpeting across its narrow 
bay—clots of wind-borne spume floating among its dusky 
pinnacles—and the roar of the sea echoing against its 
walls! Imagine it frozen stark in winter, icy hoar-frost 
edging its every boss, moulding, finial, crocket, cusp! 

Indeed, are there not works of man, legacies of a half- 
forgotten past, scattered across this human world of ours 
from China to Peru which seem to daunt the imagina- 
tion with their incomprehensibility? Incomprehensible, I 
mean, in the sense that the passion that inspired and con- 
ceived them is incomprehensible. Viewed in the light of 
the passing day, they might be the monuments of a race 
of demi-gods. And yet, if we could but free ourselves 
from our timidities, realise, that even we ourselves have 
an obligation to leave behind us similar memorials—testa- 
ments to the creative and faithful genius not so much of 
the individual as of Humanity itself. 

However that may be, it was my own personal fortune 
to see All Hallows for the first time in the heat of the 
Dog Days, after a journey which could hardly be justi- 
fied except by its end. At this moment of the afternoon 
the great church almost cheated one into the belief that 
it was possessed of a life of its own. It lay, as I say, 

201 


All Hallows 


couched in its natural hollow, basking under the dark 
dome of the heavens .like some half-fossilised monster 
that might at any moment stir and awaken out of the 
swoon to which the wand of the enchanter had committed 
it. And with every inch of the sun’s descending jour- 
ney it changed its appearance. 

That is the charm of such.things. Man himself, says 
the philosopher, is the sport of change. His life and the 
life around him are but the flotsam of a perpetual flux. 
Yet, haunted by ideals, egged on by impossibilities, he 
builds his vision of the changeless; and time diversifies 
it with its colours and its “effects” at leisure. It was 
drawing near to harvest now; the summer was nearly 
over; the corn would soon be in stook ; the season of silence 
had come, not even the robins had yet begun to practice 
their autumnal lament. I should have come earlier. 

The distance was of little account. But nine flinty 
hills in seven miles is certainly hard commons. To plod 
(the occupant of a cloud of dust) up one steep incline and 
so see another ; to plod up that and so see a third; to sur- 
mount that and, half-choked, half-roasted, to see (as if 
in unbelievable mirage) a fourth—and always stone walls, 
discoloured grass, no flower but ragged ragwort, whited 
fleabane, moody nettle, and the exqpisite stubborn bind- 
weed with its almond-burdened censers, and always the 
glitter and dazzle of the sun—well, the experience grows 
irksome. And then that endless flint erection with which 
some jealous Lord of the Manor had barricaded his ver- 
durous estate! A fly-infested mile of the company of 
that wall was tantamount to making one’s way into the 
infernal regions—with Tantalus for fellow-pilgrim. 
And when a solitary and empty dung-wagon had lum- 
202 


All Hallows 


bered by, lifting the dumb dust out of the road in swirling 
clouds into the heat-quivering air, I had all but wept 
aloud. 

No, I shall not easily forget that walk—or the conclu- 
sion of it—when footsore, all but dead beat—dust all over 
me, cheeks, lips, eyelids, in my hair, dust in drifts even 
between my naked body and my clothes—I stretched my 
aching limbs on the turf under the straggle of trees which 
crowned the bluff of that last hill still blessedly green and 
verdant, and feasted my eyes on the cathedral beneath 
me. How odd Memory is—in her sorting arrangements. 
(How perverse her pigeon-holes. 

It had reminded me of a drizzling evening many years 
ago. I had stayed a moment to listen to an old Salva- 
tion Army officer preaching at a street corner. The 
sopped and squalid houses echoed with his harangue. 
His penitents’ drum resembled the block of an execu- 
tioner. His goatish beard wagged at every word he ut- 
tered. ‘My brothers and sisters,’ he was saying, “the 
very instant our fleshly bodies are born they begin to 
perish ; the moment the Lord has put them together, time 
begins to take them to pieces again. Now at this very 
instant if you listen close, you can hear the nibblings and 
frettings of the moth and rust within—the worm that 
never dies. It’s the same with human causes and creeds 
and institutions—just the same. O then for that Strand 
of Beauty where all that is mortal shall be shed away and 
we shall appear in the likeness and verisimilitude of what 
in sober and awful truth we are.” 

The light striking out of an oil and colourman’s shop 
at the street corner lay across his cheek and beard and 
glassed his eye. The soaked circle of humanity in which 

203 


All Hallows 


he was gesticulating stood staring and motionless—the 
lassies, the probationers, the melancholy idlers. I had 
had enough. I went away. But it is odd that so utterly 
inappropriate a recollection should have edged back into 
my mind at this moment. There was, as I have said, not 
a living soul in sight. Only a few sea-birds—oyster 
catchers maybe—were jangling on the distant beach. 

It was now a quarter to four by my watch, and the 
usual pensive “lin-lan-lone” from the belfry beneath me 
would soon no doubt be ringing to evensong. But if at 
that moment a triple bob-major had suddenly clanged its 
alarm over sea and shore, I couldn’t have stirred a finger’s 
breadth. Scanty though the shade afforded by the wind- 
shorn tuft of trees under which I lay might be—I was in- 
effably at peace. 

No bell, as a matter of fact, loosed its tongue that stag- 
nant half-hour. Unless then the walls beneath me already 
concealed a few such chance visitors as myself, All Hal- 
lows would be empty. A cathedral not only without a 
close but without a congregation—yet another romantic 
charm. The Deanery and the residences of its clergy, my 
old guide-book had long since informed me, were a full 
mile or more away. I determined in due time, first to 
make sure of an entry, and then having quenched my 
thirst, to bathe. 

How inhuman any extremity—hunger, fatigue, pain, 
desire—makes us poor humans. Thirst and drought so 
haunted my mind that again and again as I glanced to- 
wards it I supped up at one long draught that complete 
blue sea. But meanwhile, too, my eyes had been steadily 
exploring and searching out this monument of the by- 
gone centuries beneath me. 
204. 


(ue 


All Hallows 


The headland faced approximately due west. The win- 
dows of the Lady Chapel therefore lay immediately be- 
neath me, their fourteenth-century glass showing flatly 
dark amid their traceries. Above it, the shallow V- 
shaped, leaden-ribbed roof of the chancel converged to- 
wards the unfinished tower, then broke away at right 
angles—for the cathedral was cruciform. Walls so 
ancient and so sparsely adorned and decorated could not 
but be inhospitable in effect. Their stone was of a 
bleached bone-grey ; a grey that none the less seemed to be 
as immaterial as flame—or incandescent ash. They were 
substantial enough, however, to cast a marvellously lucent 
shadow, of a blue no less vivid but paler than that of the 
sea, on the shelving sward beneath them. And that 
shadow was steadily shifting as I watched. But even if 
the complete edifice had vanished into the void, the scene 
would still have been of an incredible loveliness. The 
colours in air and sky on this dangerous coast seemed to 
shed a peculiar unreality even on the rocks of its own 
outworks. 

So, from my vantage p!oce on the hill that dominates 
it, I continued for a while to watch All Hallows; to spy 
upon it; and no less intently than a sentry who, not quite 
trusting his own eyes, has seen a dubious shape approach- 
ing him in the dusk. It may sound absurd, but I felt that 
at any moment I too might surprise All Hallows in the 
act of revealing what in very truth it looked like—and 
was, when no human witness was there to share its soli- 
tude. 

Those gigantic statues, for example, which flanked the 
base of the unfinished tower—an intense bluish-white in 
the sunlight and a bluish-purple in shadow—images of 

205 


All Hallows 


angels and of saints, as I had learned of old from my 
guide-book. Only six of them at most could be visible, 
of course, from where I sat. And yet I found myself 
counting them again and yet again, as if doubting my 
own arithmetic. For my first impression had been that 
seven were in view—though the figure furthest from me 
at the western angle showed little more than a jutting 
fragment of stone which might perhaps be only part and 
parcel of the fabric itself. 

But then the lights even of day may be deceitful, and 
fantasy plays strange tricks with one’s eyes. With ex- 
ercise, none the less, the mind is enabled to detect minute 
details which the unaided eye is incapable of particular- 
ising. Given the imagination, man himself indeed may 
some day be able to distinguish what shapes are walking 
during our own terrestrial midnight amid the black sha- 
dows of the craters in the noonday of the moon. At any 
rate, I could trace at last frets of carving, minute weather 
marks, crookednesses, incrustations, repairings, that had 
before passed unnoticed. These walls, indeed, like hu- 
man faces, were maps and charts of their own long past.. 

In the midst of this prolonged scrutiny, the hypnotic 
air, the heat, must suddenly have overcome me. I fell 
asleep up there in my grove’s scanty shade; and remained 
asleep, too, long enough (as time is measured by the 
clocks of sleep), to dream an immense panoramic dream. 
On waking, I could recall only the faintest vestiges of it, 
and found that the hand of my watch had crept on but 
a few minutes in the interval. It was eight minutes past 
four. 

I scrambled up—numbed and inert—with that peculiar 
sense of panic which sometimes follows an uneasy sleep. 


206 


All Hallows 


What folly to have been frittering time away within sight 
of my goal at an hour when no doubt the cathedral would 
soon be closed to visitors, and abandoned for the night 
to its own secret ruminations. I hastened down the steep 
rounded incline of the hill, and having skirted under the 
sunlit expanse of the walls, came presently to the south 
door, only to discover that my forebodings had been justi- 
fied, and that it was already barred and bolted. The dis- 
covery seemed to increase my fatigue fourfold. How fool- 
ish it is to obey mere caprices. What a straw is a man! 

I glanced up into the beautiful shell of masonry above 
my head. Shapes and figures in stone it showed in plenty 
—symbols of an imagination that had flamed and faded, 
leaving this signature for sole witness—but not a living 
bird or butterfly. There was but one faint chance left of 
making an entry. Hunted now, rather than the hunter, 
I hastened out again into the full blazing flood of sun- 
shine—and once more came within sight of the sea; a sea 
so near at last that I could hear its enormous sallies and 
murmurings. Indeed I had not realised until that mo- 
ment how closely the great western doors of the cathedral 
abutted on the beach. 

It was as if its hospitality had been deliberately de- 
signed, not for a people to whom the faith of which it 
was the shrine had become a weariness and a common- 
place, but for the solace of pilgrims from over the ocean. 
I could see them tumbling into their cockle-boats out of 
their great hollow ships—sails idle, anchors down; see 
them leaping ashore and straggling up across the sands to 
these all-welcoming portals—‘“Parthians and Medes and 
Elamites; dwellers in Mesopotamia and in the parts of 
Egypt about Cyrene; strangers of Rome, Jews and Prose- 

207 


All Hallows 


lytes—we do hear them speak in our own tongue the won- 
derful works of God.” 

And so at last I found my way into All Hallows— 
entering by a rounded dwarfish side-door with zigzag 
mouldings. There hung for corbel to its dripstone a 
curious leering face, with its forked tongue out, to give 
me welcome. And an appropriate one, too, for the figure 
I made! . 

But once beneath that prodigious roof-tree, I forgot 
myself and everything that was mine. The hush, the 
coolness, the unfathomable twilight drifted in on my 
small human consciousness. Not even the ocean itself 
is able so completely to receive one into its solacing bosom. 
Except for the windows over my head, filtering with their 
stained glass the last western radiance of the sun, there 
was but little visible colour in those great spaces, and a 
severe economy of decoration. The stone piers carried 
their round arches with an almost intimidating impas- 
sivity. 

By deliberate design, too, or by some illusion of 
perspective, the whole floor of the building appeared 
steadily to ascend towards the east, where a dark wooden 
multitudinously-figured rood-screen shut off the choir and 
the high altar from the nave. JI seemed to have exchanged 
one universal actuality for another: the burning world 
of nature, for this oasis of quiet. Here, the wings of the 
imagination need never rest in their flight out of the 
wilderness into the unknown. 

Thus resting, I must again have fallen asleep. And 
so swiftly can even the merest freshet of sleep affect the 
mind, that when my eyes opened, I was completely at a 
loss, 


208 


All Hallows 


Where was I? What demon of what romantic chasm 
had swept my poor drowsy body into this immense 
haunt? The din and clamour of an horrific dream whose 
fainting rumour was still in my ear, became suddenly 
stilled. Then at one and the same moment, a sense of 
utter dismay at earthly surroundings no longer serene 
and peaceful, but grim and forbidding, flooded my mind, 
and I became aware that I was no longer alone. Twenty 
or thirty paces away, and a little this side of the rood- 
screen, an old man was standing. 

To judge from the black and purple velvet and tassel- 
tagged gown he wore, he was a verger. He had not yet 
realised, it seemed, that a visitor shared his solitude. And 
yet he was listening. His head was craned forward and 
leaned sideways on his rusty shoulders. As I steadily 
watched him, he raised his eyes, and with a peculiar 
stealthy deliberation scanned the complete upper regions 
of the northern transept. Not the faintest rumour of 
any sound that may have attracted his attention reached 
me where I sat. Maybe a wild bird had made its entry 
through a broken pane of glass and with its cry had at 
the same moment awakened me and caught his attention. 
Or maybe the old man was waiting for some fellow- 
occupant to join him from above. 

I continued to watch him. Even at this distance, the 
silvery twilight cast by the clere-story windows was suf- 
ficient to show me, though vaguely, his face: the high 
sloping nose, the lean cheekbones and protruding chin. 
He continued so long in the same position that I at last 
determined to break in on his reverie. 

At sound of my footsteps his head sunk cautiously back 
upon his shoulders; and he turned; and then motionlessly 


209 


All Hallows 


surveyed me as I drew near. He resembled one of those 
old men whom Rembrandt delighted in drawing: the 
knotted hands, the blank drooping eyebrows, the wide 
thin-lipped ecclesiastical mouth, the intent cavernous dark 
eyes beneath the heavy folds of their lids. White as a 
miller with dust, hot and draggled, I was hardly the kind 
of visitor that any self-respecting custodian would warmly 
welcome, but he greeted me none the less with every mark 
of courtesy. 

I apologised for the lateness of my arrival, and ex- 
plained it as best I could. “Until I caught sight of you,” 
I concluded lamely, ‘I hadn’t ventured very far in: other- 
wise I might have found myself a prisoner for the night. 
It must be dark in here when there is no moon.” 

The old man smiled—but wryly. “As a matter of fact, 
sir,” he replied, “the cathedral is closed to visitors at four 
—at such times, that is, when there is no afternoon serv- 
ice. Services are not as frequent as they were. But 
visitors are rare too. In winter, in particular, you notice 
the gloom—as you say, sir. Not that I ever spend the 
night here: though I am usually last to leave. There’s 
the risk of fire to be thought of and . . . I think I should 
have detected your presence here, sir. One becomes ac- 
customed after many years.” 

There was the usual trace of official pedantry in his 
voice, but it was more pleasing than otherwise. Nor did 
he show any wish to be rid of me. He continued his 
survey, although his eye was a little absent and his at- 
tention seemed to be divided. 

“T thought perhaps I might be able to find a room for 
the night and really explore the cathedral to-morrow morn- 
ing. It has been a tiring journey; I come-from B——” 
210 


All Hallows 


“Ah, from B 3 it is a fatiguing journey, sir, taken 
on foot. I used to walk in there to see a sick daughter 
of mine. Carriage parties occasionally make their way 
here, but not so much as once. We are too far out of 
the hurly-burly to be much intruded on. Not that them 
who come to make their worship here are intruders. 
Far from it. But most that come are mere sightseers. 
And the fewer of them, I say, in the circumstances, the 
better.” 

Something in what I had said or in my appearance 
seemed to have reassured him. ‘Well, I cannot claim 
to be a regular churchgoer,” I said. “I am myself a mere 
sightseer. And yet—even to sit here for a few minutes 
is to be reconciled.” 

“Ah, reconciled, sir,” the old man repeated, turning 
away. “I can well imagine it after that journey on such 
a day as this. But to live here is another matter.” 

“T was thinking of that,” I replied in a foolish attempt 
to retrieve the position. “It must, as you say, be deso- 
late enough in the winter—for two-thirds of the year, 
indeed.” 

“We have our storms, sir—the bad with the good,” 
he agreed, “and our position is specially prolific of what 
they call sea-fog. It comes driving in from the sea for 
days and nights together—gale and mist, so that you can 
scarcely see your open hand in front of your eyes even 
in broad daylight. And the noise of it, sir, sweeping 
across overhead in that wooliness of mist, if you take me, 
is most peculiar. It’s shocking to a stranger. No, sir, 
we are left pretty much to ourselves when the fine weather 
birds are flown. . . . You’d be astonished at the power of 
the winds here. There was a mason—a local man too— 

211 





All Hallows 


not above two or three years ago was blown clean off the 
roof from under the tower—tossed up in the air like an 
empty sack. But’”—and the old man at last allowed his 
eyes to stray upwards to the roof again—‘“‘but there’s not 
much doing now.” He seemed to be pondering. ‘Noth- 
ing open.” 

“TI mustn’t detain you,” I said, “but you were saying 
that services are infrequent now. Why is that? When 
one thinks of——-” But tact restrained me. 

“Pray don’t think of keeping me, sir. It’s a part of 
my duties. But from a remark you let fall I was sup- 
posing you may have seen something that appeared, I 
understand, not many months ago in the newspapers. 
We lost our Dean—Dean Pomfrey—last November. To 
all intents and purposes, I mean; and his office has not 
yet been filled. Between you and me, sir, there’s a hitch 
—though I should wish it to go no further. They are 
greedy monsters—those newspapers: no respect, no dis- 
cretion, no decency, in my view. And they copy each 
other like cats in a chorus. 

‘“‘We have never wanted to be a notoriety here, sir: and 
not of late things of all times. We must face our own 
troubles. You’d be astonished how callous the mere 
sightseer can be. And not only them from over the water 
whom our particular troubles cannot concern—but far 
worse—parties as English as you or me. They ask you 
questions you wouldn’t believe possible in a civilized 
country. Not that they care what becomes of us—not one 
iota, sir. We talk of them masked-up Inquisitors in olden 
times, but there’s many a human being in our own would 
enjoy seeing a fellow-creature on the rack if he could 
get the opportunity. It’s a heartless age, sir.” : 
212 


All Hallows 


This was queerish talk in the circumstances: and after 
all I myself was of the glorious company of the sight- 
seers. I held my peace. And the old man, as if to 
make amends, asked me if I would care to see any par- 
ticular part of the building. “The light is smalling,” he 
explained, “but still if we keep to the ground level there’ll 
be a few minutes to spare; and we shall not be interrupted 
if we go quietly on our way.” 

For the moment the reference eluded me: I could only 
thank him for the suggestion and once more beg him not 
to put himself to any inconvenience. I explained, too, 
that though I had no personal acquaintance with Dr. 
Pomfrey, I had read of his illness in the newspapers. 
“Isn't he,” I added a little dubiously, “the author of The 
Church and the Folk? If so, he must be an exceedingly 
learned and delightful man.” 

“Ay, sir.” The old verger put up a hand towards me; 
“you may well say it: a saint, if ever there was one. But 
it’s worse than illness, sir—it’s oblivion. And, thank 
God, the newspapers didn’t get hold of more than a bare 
outline.” 

He dropped his voice. “This way, if you please ;” and 
he led me off gently down the aisle, once more coming 
to a standstill beneath the roof of the tower. “What I 
mean, sir, is that there’s very few left in this world who 
have any place in their minds for a sacred confidence— 
no reverence, sir. They would as lief All Hallows and 
all it stands for were swept away to-morrow, demolished 
to the dust. And that gives me the greatest caution with 
whom I speak. But sharing one’s troubles is sometimes 
a relief. If it weren’t so, why do those Cartholics have 
their wooden boxes all built for the purpose? What else, 

213 


All Hallows 


I ask you, is the meaning of their fasts and penances? 

“You see, sir, I am myself, and have been for upwards 
of twelve years now, the Dean’s verger. In the sight of 
no respecter of persons—of offices and dignities, that is, 
I take it—I might claim to be even an elder brother. 
And our Dean, sir, was a man who was all things to all 
men. No pride of place, no vauntingness, none of your 
apron-and-gaiter high-and-mightiness whatsoever,  sif. 
And then that! And to come on us without warning; 
or at least without warning as could be taken as such.” 
I followed his eyes into the darkening stony spaces above 
us; a light like tarnished silver lay over the soundless 
vaultings. But so, of course, dusk, either of evening or 
day-break, would affect the ancient stones. Nothing 
moved there, 

“You must understand, sir,” the old man was continu- 
ing, “the procession for divine service proceeds from the 
vestry over yonder out through those wrought-iron gates 
and so under the rood-screen and into the chancel there. 
Visitors are admitted on showing a card or a word to the 
verger in charge: but not otherwise. If you stand a 
pace or two to the right, you will catch a glimpse of the 
altar-screen—fourteenth-century work, Bishop Robert de 
Beaufort—and a unique example of the age. But what 
I was saying is that when we proceed for the services 
out of here into there, it has always been our custom to 
keep pretty close together; more seemly and decent, sir, 
than straggling in like so many sheep. 

“Besides, sir, aren’t we at such times in the manner of 
an array; ‘marching as to war,’ if you take me: it’s a les- 
son in objects. The third verger leading: then the choris- 
214 


All Hallows 


ters, boys and men, though sadly depleted ; then the minor 
canons; then any other dignitaries who may happen to 
be present, with the canon in residence; then myself, sir, 
followed by the Dean. 

“There hadn’t been much amiss up to then, and on 
that afternoon, I can vouch—and I’ve repeated it ad 
naushum—there was not a single stranger out in this be- 
yond here, sir—nave or transepts. Not within view, that 
is: one can’t be expected to see through four feet of 
Norman stone. Well, sir, we had gone on our way, and 
I had actually turned about as usual to bow Dr. Pomfrey 
into his stall, when I found to my consternation, to my 
consternation, I say, he wasn’t there! It alarmed me, sir, 
and as you might well believe if you knew the full cir- 
cumstances. 

“Not that I lost my presence of mind. My first duty 
was to see all things to be in order and nothing unseemly 
to occur. My feelings were another matter. The old 
gentleman had left the vestry with us: that I knew: I had 
myself robed ’im as usual, and he in his own manner, 
smiling with his ‘Well, Jones, another day gone; another 
day gone.’ He was always an anxious gentleman for 
time, sit. How we spend it and all. 

“As I say, then, he was behind me when we swept out 
of the gates. I saw him coming on out of the tail of my 
eye—we grow accustomed to it, to see with the whole 
of the eye, I mean. And then—not a vestige; and me— 
well, sir, nonplussed, as you may imagine. I gave a 
look and sign at Canon’ Ockham, and the service proceeded 
as usual, while I hurried back to the vestry thinking the 
poor gentleman must have been taken suddenly ill. And 

215 


All Hallows 


yet, sir, I was not surprised to find the vestry vacant, and 
him not there. I had been expecting matters to come 
to what you might call a head. 

“As best I could I held my tongue, and a fortunate 
thing it was that Canon Ockham was then in residence, 
and not Canon Leigh Shougar, though perhaps I.am not 
the one to say it. No, sir, our beloved Dean—as pious 
and harmless a gentleman as ever graced the Church— 
was gone for ever. He was not to appear in our midst 
again. He had been’—and the old man with elevated 
eyebrows and long lean mouth nearly whispered the words 
into my ear—“he had been absconded—abducted, sir.” 

“Abducted!” I murmured. 

The old man closed his eyes, and with trembling lids 
added, “He was found, sir, late that night up there in 
what they call the Trophy Room—sitting in a corner 
there, weeping. <A child. Not a word of what had per- 
suaded him to go or misled -him there, not a word of 
sorrow or sadness, thank God. He didn’t know us, sir 
—didn’t know me. Just simple; harmless; memory all 
gone. Simple, sir.” 

It was foolish to be whispering together like this be- 
neath these enormous spaces with not so much as a 
clothes-moth for sign of life within view. But I even 
lowered my voice still further: “Were there no pre- 
monitory symptoms? Had he been failing for long?” 

The spectacle of grief in any human face is afflicting, 
but in a face as aged and resigned as this old man’s—I 
turned away in remorse the moment the question was out 
of my lips; emotion of any kind is a human solvent and 
a sort of friendliness had sprung up between us. 

“If you will just follow me,” he whispered, “there’s 
216 | 


All Hallows 


a little place where I make my ablutions that might be of 
service, sir. We could converse there in better comfort. 
I am sometimes reminded of those words in Ecclesiastes: 
‘And a bird of the air shall tell of the matter.’ There is 
not much in our poor human affairs, sir, that was not 
known to the writer of that book.” 

He turned and led the way with surprising celerity, 
gliding along in his thin-soled, square-toed, clerical 
springside boots and came to a pause outside a nail- 
studded door. He opened it with a huge key, and ad- 
mitted me into a recess under the central tower. We 
mounted a spiral stone staircase and passed along a cor- 
ridor hardly more than two feet wide and so dark that 
now and again I thrust out my fingertips in search of his 
black velveted gown to make sure of my guide. 

This corridor at length conducted us into a little room 
whose only illumination I gathered was that of the ebbing 
dusk from within the cathedral. The old man with 
trembling rheumatic fingers lit a candle, and thrusting its 
stick into the middle of an old oak table, pushed open yet 
another thick oaken door. “You will find a basin and a 
towel in there, sir, if you will be so kind.” 

I entered. A print of the Crucifixion was tin-tacked 
to the panelled wall, and beneath it stood a tin basin and 
jug on a stand. Never was water sweeter. I laved my 
face and hands, and drank deep; my throat like a parched 
river-course after a drought. What appeared to be a 
tarnished censer lay in one corner of the room; a pair of 
seven-branched candlesticks shared a recess with a mouse- 
trap and a book. My eyes passed wearily yet gratefully 
from one to another of these mute discarded objects while 
I stood drying my hands, 

217 


All Hallows 


When I returned, the old man was standing motion- 
less before the spike-barred grill of the window, peering 
out and down. 

“You asked me, sir,” he said, turning his lank waxen 
face into the feeble rays of the candle, “you asked me, 
sir, a question which, if I understood you aright was 
this: Was there anything that had occurred previous 
that would explain what I have been telling you? Well, 
sir, it’s a long story, and one best restricted to them per- 
haps that have the goodwill of things at heart. All 
Hallows, I might say, sir, is my second home. I have 
been here, boy and man, for close on fifty-five years— 
have seen four bishops pass away and have served under 
no less than five several deans, Dr. Pomfrey, poor gentle- 
man, being the last of the five. 

“If such a word could be excused, sir, it’s no exaggera- 
tion to say that Canon Leigh Shougar is a greenhorn by 
comparison: which may in part be why he has never quite 
hit it off, as they say, with Canon Ockham. Or even 
with Archdeacon Trafford, though he’s another kind of 
gentleman altogether. And he is at present abroad. He 
had what they call a breakdown in health, sir. 

“Now in my humble opinion, what was required was 
not only wisdom and knowledge but simple common 
sense. In the circumstances I am about to mention, it 
serves no purpose for any of us to be talking too much; 
to be for ever sitting at a table with shut doors and finger 
on lip, and discussing what to most intents and purposes 
would hardly be called evidence at all, sir. What is the 
use of argufying, splitting hairs, objurgating about trifles, 
when matters are sweeping rapidly on from bad to worse. 
I say it with all due respect and not, I hope, thrusting my- 
218 


All Hallows 


self into what doesn’t concern me: Dr. Pomfrey might 
be with us now in his own self and reason if only com- 
mon caution had been observed. 

“But now that the poor gentleman is gone beyond all 
that, there is no hope of action or agreement left, none 
whatsoever. They meet and they meet, and they have 
now one expert now another down from London, and 
even from the continent. And I don’t say they are not 
knowledgable gentlemen either, nor a pride to their pro- 
fession. But why not tell all? Why keep back the very 
secret of what we know? That’s what I am asking. 
And, what’s the answer? Why simply that what they 
don’t want to believe, what runs counter to their hopes 
and wishes and credibilities—and comfort—in this world, 
that’s what they keep out of sight as long as decency 
permits. 

“Canon Leigh Shougar knows, sir, what J know. And 
how, I ask, is he going to get to grips with it at this late 
day if he refuses to acknowledge that such things are 
what every fragment of evidence goes to prove that they 
are. It’s we, sir, and not the rest of the heedless world 
outside, who in the long and the short of it are responsible. 
_ And what I say is: no power or principality here or here- 
under can take possession of a place while those inside 
have faith enough to keep them out. But once let that 
falter—the seas are in. And when I say no power, sir, 
I mean—with all deference—even Satan himself.” The 
lean lank face had set at the word like a wax mask. The 
black eyes beneath the heavy lids were fixed on mine 
with an acute intensity and—though more inscrutable 
things haunted them—with an unfaltering courage. So 
dense a hush hung about us that the very stones of the 


219 


All Hallows 


walls seemed to be of silence solidified. It is curious 
what a refreshment of spirit a mere tin basinful of water 
may be. I stood leaning against the edge of the table 
so that the candlelight still rested on my companion. 

“What is wrong here?” I asked him baldly. 

He seemed not to have expected so direct an enquiry. 
“Wrong, sir? Why, if I might make so bold,” he replied 
with a wan, far-away smile and gently drawing his hand 
down one of the velvet lapels of his gown, “if I might 
make so bold, sir, I take it that you have come as a 
direct answer to prayer.” 

His voice faltered. “I am an old man now, and nearly 
at the end of my tether. You must realise, if you please, 
that I can’t get any help that I can understand. J am not 
doubting that the gentlemen I have mentioned have only 
the salvation of the cathedral at heart—the cause, sir; and 
a graver responsibility yet. But they refuse to see how 
close to the edge of things we are: and how we are drift- 
ing. 

“Take mere situation. So far as my knowledge tells 
me, there is no sacred edifice in the whole kingdom— 
of a piece, that is, with All Hallows not only in mere 
size and age but in what I might call sanctity and tradi- 
tion—that is so open—open, I mean, sir, to attack of this 
peculiar and terrifying nature.” 

“Terrifying ?” 

“Terrifying, sir; though I hold fast to what wits my 
Maker has bestowed on me. Where else, may I ask, 
would you expect the powers of darkness to congregate in 
open besiegement than in this narrow valley? First, the 
sea out there. Are you aware, sir, that ever since living 
remembrance flood-tide has been gnawing and mumbling 
220 


All Hallows 


its way into this bay to the extent of three or four feet 
per annum? Forty inches, and forty inches, and forty 
inches corroding on and on: Watch it, sir, man and 
boy as I have these sixty years past and then make a 
century of it. 

“And now, think a moment of the floods and gales that 
fall upon us autumn and winter through and even in 
spring, when this valley is liker paradise to young eyes 
than any place on earth. They make the roads from the 
nearest towns wellnigh impassable; which means that for 
seven months of the year we are to all intents and pur- 
poses clean cut off from the rest of the world—as the 
Schindels out there are from the mainland. Are you 
aware, sir, I continue, that as we stand now we are above 
a mile from traces of the nearest human habitation, and 
them merely the relics of a burnt-out old farmstead? I 
watrant that if (and which God forbid) you had been 
shut up here during the coming night, and it was a near 
thing but what you weren’t—I warrant you might have 
shouted yourself dumb out of the nearest window if win- 
dow you could reach—and not a human soul to heed or 
help you.” | 

I shifted my hands on the table. It was tedious to be 
asking questions that received only such vague and evasive 
replies: and it is always a little disconcerting in the 
presence of a stranger to be spoken to so close, and with 
such positiveness. 

“Well,” I smiled, “I hope I should not have disgraced 
my nerves to such an extreme as that. As a small boy, 
one of my particular fancies was to spend a night in a 
pulpit. There’s a cushion, you know!” 

The old man’s solemn glance never swerved from my 

22! 


All Hallows 


eyes. “But I take it, sir,” he said, “if you had ventured 
to give out a text up there in the dark hours, your inno- 
cent young mind would not have been prepared for any 
kind of a congregation?” 

“You mean,” I said a little sharply, “that the place is 
haunted?” The absurd notion had flitted across my mind 
of some wandering tribe of gipsies chancing on a refuge 
so ample and isolated as this, and taking up its quarters 
in its secret parts. The old church must be honeycombed 
with corridors and passages and chambers pretty much 
like the one in which we were now concealed: and what 
does “cartholic” imply but an infinite hospitality within 
prescribed limits? But the old man had taken me at my 
word. 

“T mean, sir,” he said firmly, shutting his eyes, “that 
there are devilish agencies at work here.” He raised his 
hand. “Don’t, I entreat you, dismiss what I am saying 
as the wanderings of a foolish old man.” He drew a. 
little nearer. “I have heard them with these ears; Il 
have seen them with these eyes ; though whether they have 
any positive substance, sir, is beyond my small knowledge 
to declare. But what indeed might we expect their sub- 
stance to be? First: I ‘take it,’ says the Book, ‘to be 
such as no man can by learning define, nor by wisdom 
search out.’ Is that so? Then I go by the Book. And 
next: what does the same Word or very near it (I speak 
of the Apochrypha) say of their purpose? It says— 
and correct me if I go astray—‘Devils are creatures made 
by God, and that for vengeance’ 

“So far, so good, sir. We stop when we can go no 
further. Vengeance. But of their power, of what they 
can do, I can give you definite evidences. It would be 
222 


All Hallows 


a byword if once the rumour was spread abroad. And if 
it is not so, why, I ask, does every expert that comes here 
leave us in haste and in dismay? They go off with their 
tails between their legs. They see, they grope in, but 
they don’t believe. They invent reasons. And they has- 
ten to leave us!” His face shook with the emphasis he 
laid upon the word. “Why? Why, because the experi- 
ence is beyond their knowledge, sir.’ He drew back 
breathless and, as I could see, profoundly moved. 

“But surely,” I said, “every old building is bound in 
time to show symptoms of decay. Half the cathedrals 
in England, half its churches, even, of any age, have been 
‘restored’—and in many cases with ghastly results. This 
new grouting and so on. Why, only the other day ... 
All I mean is, why should you suppose mere wear and 
tear should be caused by any other agency than ‘ 

The old man turned away. “I must apologise,” he in- 
terrupted me with his inimitable admixture of modesty and 
dignity, “I am a poor mouth at explanations, sir. Decay 
—stress—strain—settling—dissolution: I have heard 
those words bandied from lip to lip like a game at cup 
and ball. They fill me with nausea. Why, I am speak- 
ing not of dissolution, sir, but of repairs, restorations. 
Not decay, strengthening. Not a corroding loss, an aw- 
ful progress. I could show you places—and chiefly ob- 
scured from direct view and difficult of a close examina- 
tion, sir, where stones lately as rotten as pumice and as 
fretted as a sponge have been replaced by others fresh- 
quarried—and nothing of their kind within twenty miles. 

“There are spots where massive blocks a yard or more 
square have been pushed into place by sheer force. All 
Hallows is safer at this moment than it has been for three 

290 





All Hallows 


hundred years. They meant well—them who came to 
see, full of talk and fine language, and went dumb away. 
I grant you they meant well. I allow that. They 
hummed and they hawed. They smirked this and they 
shrugged that. But at heart, sir, they were cowed— 
horrified: all at a loss. Their very faces showed it. But 
if you ask me for what purpose such doings are afoot— 
I have no answer; none. 

“But now, supposing you yourself, sir, were one of 
them, with your repute at stake, and you were called in 
to look at a house which the owners of it and them who 
had it in trast were disturbed by its being re-edificated 
and restored by some agency unknown to them. Suppos- 
ing that! Why,’ and he rapped with his knuckles on 
the table, “being human and not one of us mightn’t you 
be going away too with mouth shut, because you didn’t 
want to get talked about to your disadvantage? And 
wouldn’t you at last dismiss the whole thing as a foolish 
delusion, in the belief that living in out-of-the-way parts 
like these cuts a man off from the world, breeds maggots ~ 
in the mind? 

“T assure you, sir, they don’t—not even Canon Ockham 
himself to the full—they don’t believe even me. And 
yet, when they have their meetings of the Chapter, they 
talk and wrangle round and round about nothing else. 
I can bear the other without a murmur. What God 
sends, I say, we humans deserve. We have laid ourselves 
open to it. But when you buttress up blindness and 
wickedness with downright folly, why then, sir, I some- 
times fear for my own reason.” 

He set his shoulders as square as his aged frame would 
permit, and with fingers clutching the lapels beneath his 
224 


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chin, he stood gazing out into the darkness through that 
narrow inward window. 

“Ah, sir,” he began again, “I have not spent sixty years 
in this solitary place without paying heed to my own small 
wandering thoughts and instincts. Look at your news- 
papers, sir. What they call the Great War is over—and 
he’d be a brave man who would take an oath before heaven 
that that was only of human designing—and yet what do 
we see around us? Nothing but strife and juggleries 
and hatred and contempt and discord wherever you look. 
I am no scholar, sir, but so far as my knowledge and 
experience carry me, we human beings are living to-day 
what ought to have been done yesterday, and yet are at a 
loss to know what’s to be done to-morrow. 

“And the Church, sir. God forbid I should push my 
way into what does not concern me; and if you had told 
me half an hour gone by that you were a regular church- 
man, | shouldn’t be pouring out all this to you now. It 
wouldn’t be seemly. But being not so gives me confi- 
dence. By merely listening you can help me, sir; though 
you can’t help us. Centuries ago—and in my humble 
judgment, rightly—we broke away from the parent stem 
and rooted ourselves in our own soil. But, right or wrong, 
doesn’t that of itself, I ask you, make us all the more open 
to attack from him who never wearies in going to and 
fro in the world seeking whom he may devour? 

“TI am not wishing you to take sides. But a gentleman 
doesn’t scoff; you don’t find him jeering at what he 
doesn’t rightly understand. He keeps his own counsel, 
sir. And that’s where, as I say, Canon Leigh Shougar 
sets me doubting. He refuses to make allowances ; though 
up there in London things may look different. He gets his 

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company there; and then for him the whole kallyidoscope 
changes, if you take me.” 

The old man scanned me an instant as if enquiring 
within himself whether, after all, I too might not be one 
of the outcasts. ‘You see, sir,” he went on dejectedly, 
“T can bear what may be to come. I can, if need be, 
live on through what few years may yet remain to me and 
keep going, as they say. But only if I can be assured that 
my own inmost senses are not cheating and misleading 
me. Tell me the worst, and you will have done an old 
man a service he can never repay. ‘Tell me, on the other 
hand, that I am merely groping along in a network of 
devilish delusion, sir—well, in that case I hope to be with 
my master, with Dr. Pomfrey, as soon as possible. We 
were all children once; and now there’s nothing worse 
in this world for him to come into, in a manner of speak- 
ing. 

“Oh, sir, I sometimes wonder if what we call childhood 
and growing up isn’t a copy of the fate of our ancient 
forefathers. In the beginning of time there were Fallen 
Angels, we are told; but even if it weren’t there in 
Holy Writ, we might have learnt it of our own fears 
and misgivings. I sometimes find myself looking at a 
young child with little short of awe, sir, knowing that 
within its mind is a scene of peace and paradise of which 
we older folk have no notion, and which will fade away 
out of it, as life wears m, like the mere tabernacling of 
a dream.” 

There was no trace of unction in his speech, though 
the phraseology might suggest it, and he smiled at me as 
if in reassurance. “You see, sir—if I have any true no- 
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tion of the matter—then I say, heaven is dealing very 
gently with Dr. Pomfrey. He has gone back, and, I take 
it, his soul is elsewhere and at rest.” 

He had come a pace or two nearer, and the candlelight 
now cast grotesque shadows in the hollows of his brows 
and cheekbones, silvering his long scanty hair. The eyes, 
dimming with age, were fixed on mine as if in incom- 
municable entreaty. I was at a loss to answer him. 

He dropped his hands to his sides. “The fact is,” he 
looked cautiously about him, “what I am now being so 
bold as to suggest, though it’s a familiar enough experi- 
ence to me, may put you in actual physical danger. But 
then, duty’s duty, and a deed of kindness from stranger 
to stranger quite another matter. You seem to have 
come, if I may say so, in the nick of time: that was all. 
On the other hand we can leave the building at once if 
you are so minded. In any case we must be gone well 
before dark sets in; even mere human beings are best 
not disturbed at any night work they may be after. The 
dark brings recklessness: conscience cannot see as clear 
in the dark. Besides, I once delayed too long myself. 
There is not much of day left even now, though I see by 
the almanac there should be a slip of moon to-night— 
unless the sky is overclouded. All that I’m meaning is 
that our all-in-all, so to speak, is the calm untrammelled 
evidence of the outer senses, sir. And there comes a 
time when—well when one hesitates to trust one’s own.” 

I have read somewhere that it is only its setting—the 
shape, the line, the fold, the angle of the lid and so on— 
that gives its finer shades of meaning and significance 
to the human eye. Looking into his, even in that narrow 

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and melancholy illumination, was like pondering over a 
gray, salt, desolate pool—such as sometimes neighbours 
the sea on a flat and dangerous coast. 

Perhaps if I had been a little less credulous, or less 
exhausted, I should by now have begun to doubt this old 
creature’s sanity. And yet, surely, at even the faintest 
contact with the insane, a sentinel in the mind sends up 
flares and warnings; the very landscape changes; there 
is a sense of insecurity. If, too, the characters inscribed 
by age and experience on a man’s face can be evidence 
of goodness and simplicity, then my companion was safe 
enough. To trust in his sagacity was another matter. 

But then, there was All Hallows itself to take into ac- 
count. That first glimpse from my green headland of its 
louring yet lovely walls had been strangely moving. 
There are buildings (almost as though they were once 
copies of originals now half-forgotten in the human mind) 
that have a singular influence on the imagination. Even 
now in this remote candlelit room, immured between its 
massive stones, the vast edifice seemed to be gently and 
furtively fretting its impression on my mind. 

I glanced again at the old man: he had turned aside 
as if to leave me, unbiased, to my own decision. How 
would a lifetime spent between these sombre walls have 
affected me, I wondered? Surely it would be an act of 
mere decency to indulge their worn-out hermit! He had 
appealed to me. If I were ten times more reluctant to 
follow him, I could hardly refuse. Not at any rate with- 
out risking a retreat as humiliating as that of the archi- 
tectural experts he had referred to—with my tail between 
my legs. 

“T only wish I could hope to be of any real help.” 

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He turned about; his expression changed, as if at the 
coming of a light. “Why, then, sir, let us be gone at 
once. You are with me, sir: that was all I hoped and 
asked. And now there’s no time to waste.” 

He tilted his head to listen a moment—with that large, 
flat, shell-like ear of his which age alone seems to produce. 
“Matches and candle, sir,” he had lowered his voice to 
a whisper, “but—though we mustn’t lose each other; you 
and me, I mean—xnot, I think, a naked light. What I 
would suggest, if you have no objection, is your kindly 
grasping my gown. There is a kind of streamer here, 
you see—as if made for the purpose. There will be a 
good deal of up-and-downing, but I know the building 
blindfold and as you might say inch by inch. And now 
that the bell-ringers have given up ringing it is more in 
my charge than ever.” 

He stood back and looked at me with folded hands, a 
whimsical childlike smile on his aged face. “I sometimes 
think to myself I’m like the sentry, sir, in that play of 
William Shakespeare’s. I saw it, sir, years ago, on my 
only visit to London—when I was a boy. If ever there 
was a villain for all his fine talk and all, commend me 
to that ghost. I see him yet.” 

Whisper though it was, a sort of chirrup had come into 
his voice, like that of a cricket in a baker’s shop. I took 
tight hold of the velveted tag of his gown. He opened 
the door, pressed the box of safety matches into my hand, 
himself grasped the candlestick, and then blew out the 
light. We were instantly marooned in an impenetrable 
darkness. “Now, sir, if you would kindly remove your 
walking shoes,” he muttered close in my ear, “we should 
proceed with less noise. I shan’t hurry you. And please 

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to tug at the streamer if you need attention. In a few 
minutes the blackness will be less intense.” 

As I stooped down to loose my shoe-laces I heard my 
heart thumping merrily away. It had been listening to 
our conversation apparently! I slung my shoes round 
my neck—as I had often done as a boy when going pad- 
dling—and we set out on our expedition. 

I have endured too often the nightmare of being lost 
and abandoned in the stony bowels of some strange and 
prodigious building to take such an adventure lightly. 
I clung, I confess, desperately tight to my lifeline, and 
we groped steadily onward—my guide ever and again 
turning back to mutter warning or encouragement in my 
ear. 

Now I found myself steadily ascending; and then in a 
while, feeling my way down flights of hollowly worn 
stone steps, and anon brushing along a gallery or cork- 
screwing up a newel staircase so narrow that my shoulders 
all but touched the walls on either side. In spite of the 
sepulchral cold in these bowels of the cathedral, I was 
soon suffocatingly hot, and the effort to see became 
intolerably fatiguing. Once, to recover our breath, we 
paused opposite a slit in the thickness of the masonry, at 
which to breathe the tepid sweetness of the outer air. It 
was faint with the scent of wild flowers and cool of the 
sea. And presently after, at a barred window, high 
overhead, I caught a glimpse of the night’s first stars. 

We then turned inward once more, ascending yet an- 
other spiral staircase. And now the intense darkness 
thinned a little, the groined roof above us becoming faintly 
discernible. A fresher air softly fanned my cheek; and 
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then trembling fingers groped over my breast, and, cold 
and bony, clutched my own. 

“Dead still here, sir, if you please.” So close sounded 
the whispered syllables the voice might have been a mes- 
senger’s within my own consciousness. “Dead still, here. 
There’s a drop of some sixty or seventy feet a few paces 
on.” 

I peered out across the abyss, conscious, as it seemed, 
of the huge superincumbent weight of the noble fretted 
roof only a small space now immediately above our heads. 
As we approached the edge of this stony precipice, the 
gloom paled a little, and I guessed that we must be stand- 
ing in some coign of the southern transept, for what light 
the evening skies now afforded was clearer towards the 
right. On the other hand, it seemed the northern win- 
dows opposite us were most of them boarded up, or ob- 
scured in some fashion. Gazing out, I could detect 
scaffolding poles—like knitting needles—thrust out from 
the walls and a balloon-like spread of canvas above them. 
For the moment my ear was haunted by what appeared 
to be the droning of an immense insect. But this pres- 
ently ceased. I fancy it was internal only. 

“You will understand, sir,” breathed the old man close 
beside me—and we still stood, grotesquely enough, hand 
in hand—“the scaffolding over there has been in position 
a good many months now. It was put up when the last 
gentleman came down from London to inspect the fabric. 
And there it’s been left ever since. Now, sir!—though 
I implore you to be cautious.” 

I hardly needed the warning. With one hand clutch- 
ing my box of matches, the fingers of the other inter- 

22% 


All Hallows 


laced with my companion’s, I strained every sense. And 
yet I could detect not the faintest stir or murmur under 
that wide-spreading roof. Only a hush as profound as 
that which must reign in the Royal Chamber of the pyra- 
mid of Cheops faintly swirled in the labyrinths of my ear. 

How long we stayed in this position I cannot say; but 
minutes sometimes seem like hours. And then, without 
the slightest warning, I became aware of a peculiar and 
incessant vibration. It is impossible to give a name to 
it. It suggested the remote whirring of an enormous 
mill-stone, or that—though without definite pulsation— 
of revolving wings, or even the spinning of an immense 
top. 

In spite of his age, my companion apparently had ears 
as acute as mine. He had clutched me tighter a full ten 
seconds before I myself became aware of this disturb- 
ance of the air. He pressed closer. “Do you see that, 
sir?” 

I gazed and gazed, and saw nothing. Indeed even in 
what I had seemed to hear I might have been deceived. 
Nothing is more treacherous in certain circumstances— 
except possibly the eye—than the ear. It magnifies, dis- 
torts, and may even invent. As instantaneously as I had 
become aware of it, the murmur had ceased. And then 
—though I cannot be certain—it seemed the dingy and 
voluminous spread of canvas over there had perceptibly 
trembled, as if a huge cautious hand had been thrust out 
to draw it aside. No time was given me to make sure. 
The old man had hastily withdrawn me into the opening 
of the wall through which we had issued; and we made 
no pause in our retreat until we had come again to the 
narrow slit of window which I have spoken of and could 
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refresh ourselves with a less stagnant air. We stood here 
resting awhile. 

“Well, sir?” he enquired at last, in the same flat muffled 
tones. 

“Do you ever pass along here alone?” I whispered. 

“Oh, yes, sir. I make it a habit to be the last to leave 
—and often the first to come; but I am usually gone by 
this hour.” 

I looked close at the dim face in profile against that 
narrow oblong of night. “It is so difficult to be sure of 
oneself,’ I said. “Have you ever actually encountered 
anything—near at hand, I mean?’ 

“TI keep a sharp look-out, sir. Maybe they don’t think 
me of enough importance to molest—the last rat, as they 
say.” 

“But have you?”—I might myself have been communi- 
cating with the phantasmal genius loci of All Hallows— 
our muffled voices; this intense caution and secret listen- 
ing; the slight breathlessness, as if at any instant one’s 
heart were ready for flight: “But have you?” 

“Well yes, sir,’ he said. “And in this very gallery. 
They nearly had me, sir. But by good fortune there’s a 
recess a little further on—stored up with some old frag- 
ments of carving, from the original building, sixth- 
century, so it’s said: stone-capitals, heads and hands, and 
such like. I had had my warning, and managed to leap 
in there and conceal myself. But only just in time. In- 
deed, sir, I confess I was in such a condition of terror 
and horror I turned my back.” 

“You mean you heard, but didn’t look? And—some- 
thing came?” 

“Yes, sir, I seemed to be reduced to no bigger than a 

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child, huddled up there in that corner. There was a 
sound like clanging metal—but I don’t think it was metal. 
It drew near at a furious speed, then passed me, making 
a filthy gust of wind. For some instants I couldn't 
breathe; the air was gone.” 

“And no other sound ?” 

“No other, sir, except out of the distance a noise like 
the sounding of a stupendous kind of gibberish. A call- 
ing; or so it seemed—no human sound. The air shook 
with it. You see, sir, I myself wasn’t of any consequence, 
I take it—unless a mere obstruction in the way. But— 
I have heard it said somewhere that the rarity of these 
happenings is only because it’s a pain and torment and 
not any sort of pleasure for such beings, such apparitions, 
sir, good or bad, to visit our outward world. That’s what 
I have heard said; though I can go no further. 

“The time I’m telling you of was in the early winter 
—November. There was a dense sea-fog over the val- 
ley, I remember. It eddied through that opening there 
into the candlelight like flowing milk. I never light up 
now: and, if I may be forgiven the boast, sir, I seem to 
have almost forgotten how to be afraid. After all, in any 
walk of life a man can only do his best, and if there 
weren't such opposition and hindrances in high places, I 
should have nothing to complain of. What is anybody’s 
life, sir (come past the gaiety of youth) but marking time. 

Did you hear anything then, sir?” 

His gentle monotonous mumbling ceased and we lis- 
tened together. But every ancient edifice has voices and 
soundings of its own: there was nothing audible that | 
could put a name to, only what seemed to be a faint per- 
petual stir or whirr of grinding such as (to one’s over- 


234 


— i ore 


All Hallows 


stimulated senses) the stablest stones set one on top of 
the other with an ever slightly-varying weight and stress 
might be likely to make perceptible in a world of matter. 
A world which, after all, they say, is itself in unimaginably 
rapid rotation, and under the tyranny of time. 

“No, I hear nothing,” I answered: “but please don’t 
think I am doubting what you say. Far from it. You 
must remember I am a stranger, and that therefore the 
influence of the place cannot but be less apparent to me. 
And you have no help in this now?” 

“No sir. Not now. But even at the best of times we 
had small company hereabouts, and no money. Not for 
any substantial outlay, I mean. And not even the boldest 
suggests making what’s called a public appeal. It’s a 
strange thing to me, sir, but whenever the newspapers get 
hold of anything, they turn it into a byword and a sham. 
Yet how can they help themselves ?—with’ no beliefs to 
guide them and nothing to stay their mouths except about 
what for sheer human decency’s sake they daren’t talk 
about. But then, who am I to complain? And now, 
sir,” he continued with a sigh of utter weariness, “if you 
are sufficiently rested, would you perhaps follow me on 
to the roof? It is the last visit I make—though by rights 
perhaps I should take in what there is of the tower. But 
I’m too old now for that—clambering and climbing over 
naked beams; and the ladders are not so safe as they 
were.” 

We had not far to go. The old man drew open a 
squat heavily-ironed door at the head of a flight of wooden 
stairs. It was latched but not bolted, and admitted us 
at once to the leaden roof of the building and to the im- 
mense amphitheatre of evening. The last faint hues of 


235 


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sunset were fading in the west; and silver-bright Spica 
shared with the tilted crescent of the moon the serene 
lagoon-like expanse of sky above the sea. Even at this 
height, the air was audibly stirred with the low uullaby of 
the tide. 

The staircase by which we had come out was sur- 
mounted by a flat penthouse roof about seven feet high. 
We edged softly along, then paused once more; to find 
ourselves now all but ¢éte-d-téte with the gigantic figures 
that stood sentinel at the base of the buttresses to the 
unfinished tower. 

The tower was so far unfinished, indeed, as to wear 
the appearance of the ruinous; besides which, what ap- 
peared to be scars and stains as if of fire were detectable 
on some of its stones, reminding me of the legend which 
years before I had chanced upon, that this stretch of coast 
had more than once been visited centuries ago by pillaging 
Norsemen. 

The night was unfathomably clear and still. On our 
left rose the conical bluff of the headland crowned with 
the solitary grove of trees beneath which I had taken re- 
fuge from the blinding sunshine that very afternoon. Its 
grasses were now hoary with faintest moonlight. Far to 
the right stretched the flat cold plain of the Atlantic— 
that enormous darkened looking-glass of space; only a 
distant lightship ever and again stealthily signalling to us 
with a lean phosphoric finger from its outermost reaches. 

The mere sense of that abysm of space—its waste 
powdered with the stars of the Milky Way; the mere 
presence of the stony leviathan on whose back we two 
humans now stood, dwarfed into insignificance beside 
these gesturing images of stone, were enough of them- 
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All Hallows 


Selves to excite the imagination. And—whether matter- 
of-fact or pure delusion—this old verger’s insinuations 
that the cathedral was now menaced by some inconceivable 
danger and assault had set my nerves on edge. My feet 
were numb as the lead they stood upon; while the tips of 
my fingers tingled as if a powerful electric discharge were 
coursing through my body. 

We moved gently on—the spare shape of the old man 
a few steps ahead, peering cautiously to right and left 
of him as we advanced. Once with a hasty gesture he 
drew me back and fixed his eyes for a full minute on a 
figure—at two removes—which was silhouetted at that 
moment against the starry emptiness: a forbidding thing 
enough, viewed in this vague luminosity, which seemed in 
spite of the unmoving stare that I fixed on it to be per- 
ceptibly stirring on its windworn pedestal. 

But no; “All’s well!” the old man had mutely signalled 
to me, and we pushed on. Slowly and cautiously ; indeed 
I had time to notice in passing that this particular figure 
held stretched in its right hand a bent bow, and was 
crowned with a high weather-worn stone coronet. One 
and all were frigid company. At last we completed our 
circuit of the tower, had come back to the place we had 
set out from, and stood eyeing one another like two con- 
spirators in the clear dusk. Maybe there was a tinge 
of incredulity on my face. 

“No, sir,’ murmured the old man, “I expected no 
other. The night is uncommonly quiet. I’ve noticed that 
before. They seem to leave us at peace on nights of 
quiet. We must turn in again and be getting home.” 

Until that moment I had thought no more of where I 
was to sleep or to get food, nor had even realised how 


237 


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famished with hunger I was. Nevertheless, the notion 
of fumbling down again out of the open air into the 
narrow inward blackness of the walls from which we 
had just issued was singularly uninviting. Across these 
wide flat stretches of roof there was at least space for 
flight, and there were recesses for concealment. To gain 
a moment’s respite, I enquired if I should have much 
difficulty in getting a bed in the village. And as I had 
hoped, the old man himself offered me hospitality. 

I thanked him; but still hesitated to follow, for at that 
moment I was trying to discover what peculiar effect 
of dusk and darkness a moment before had deceived me 
into the belief that some small animal—a dog, a spaniel, 
I should have guessed—had suddenly and surreptitiously 
taken cover behind the stone buttress nearby. But that 
apparently had been a mere illusion. The creature, what- 
ever it might be, was no barker at any rate. Nothing 
stirred now; and my companion seemed to have noticed 
nothing amiss. 

“You were saying,” I pressed him, “that when repairs 
—restorations—of the building were in contemplation, 
even the experts were perplexed by what they discovered? 
What did they actually say?” 

“Say, sir!’ Our voices sounded as small and mean- 
ingless up here as those of grasshoppers in a noonday 
meadow. “Examine that balustrade which you are lean- 
ing against at this minute. Look at that gnawing and 
fretting—that furrowing above the lead. All that is 
honest wear and tear—constant weathering of the mere 
elements, sir—rain and wind and snow and frost. That’s 
honest nature-work, sir. But now compare it, if you 
please, with this St. Mark here; and remember, sir, these 
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images were intended to be part and parcel of the fabric 
as you might say, sentries on a castle—symbols, you 
understand.” 

I stooped close under the huge gray creature of stone 
until my eyes were scarcely more than six inches from 
its pedestal. And, unless the moon deceived me, I con: 
fess I could find not the slightest trace of fret or friction. 
Far from it. The stone had been grotesquely decorated 
in low relief with a gaping crocodile—a two-headed 
crocodile; and the angles, knubs and undulations of the 
creature were cut as sharp as with a knife in cheese. I 
drew back. 

“Now cast your glance upwards, sir. Is that what 
you would call a saintly shape and gesture?” 

What I took to represent an eagle was perched on the 
image’s lifted wrist—but louring and vulture-like. The 
head of the figure was poised at an angle of defiance—the 
ears unnaturally high up on the skull; the lean right fore- 
atm extended with pointing forefinger as if in derision. 
Its stony gaze was fixed upon the stars; its whole aspect 
was undeniably sinister and intimidating. The faintest 
puff of milk-warm air from over the sea stirred on my 
cheek. I drew aside. 

“Ay, sir, and so with one or two of the rest of them,” 
the old man commented, as he watched me, “there are 
other wills than the Almighty’s.” 

At this, the pent-up excitement within me broke bounds. 
This nebulous insinuatory talk!—I all but lost my temper. 
“T can’t, for the life of me, understand what you are 
saying,’ I exclaimed in a voice that astonished me with 
its shrill volume of sound in that intense lofty quiet. 
“One doesn’t repair in order to destroy.” 


#39 


All Hallows 


The old man met me without flinching. “No, sir? 
Say you so? And why not? Are there not two kinds of 
change in this world?—a building-up and a breaking- 
down? To give strength and endurance for evil or mis- 
guided purposes, would that be time wasted, if such was 
your aim? Why sir, isn’t that true even of the human 
mind and heart? We here are on the outskirts, I grant, 
but where would you expect the activity to show itself 
unless in the outer defences? An institution may be 
beyond dying, sir: it may be being restored for a worse 
destruction. And a hundred trumpeting voices would 
make no difference when the faith and life within is 
tottering to its fall.” 

Somehow, this muddle of metaphors reassured me. 
Obviously the old man’s wits had worn a little thin: he 
was the victim of an intelligible but monstrous hallucina- 
tion. 

“And yet you are taking it for granted,” I expostu- 
lated, “that, if what you say is true, a stranger could be 
of the slightest help. A visitor—mind you—who hasn't 
been inside the doors of a church, except in search of 
what is old and gone, for years.” 

The old man laid a trembling hand upon my sleeve. 
The folly of it—with my shoes hanging like ludicrous 
millstones round my neck! 

“If you please, sir,” he pleaded, “have a little patience 
with me. I’m preaching at nobody. I’m not even hint- 
ting that them outside the fold circumstantially speaking 
aren’t of the flock. All in good time, sir; the Almighty’s 
time. Maybe—with all due respect—it’s from them 
within we have most to fear. And indeed, sir, believe 
an old man: I could never express the gratitude I feel. 


240 


All Hallows 


You have given me the occasion to unbosom myself, to 
make a clean breast, as they say. All Hallows is my 
earthly home, and—well, there, let us say no more. You 
couldn’t help me—except only by your presence here. 
God alone knows who can!” 

At that instant, a dull enormous rumble reverberated 
from within the building—as if a huge boulder or block 
of stone had been shifted or dislodged in the fabric; a 
peculiar grinding nerve-wracking sound. And for the 
fraction of a second the flags on which we stood seemed 
to tremble beneath our feet. 

The fingers tightened on my arm. “Come, sir; keep 
close; we must be gone at once,” the quavering old voice 
whispered ; “we have stayed too long.” 

But we emerged into the night at last without mishap. 
The little western door, above which the grinning head 
had welcomed me on my arrival, admitted us to terra firma 
again, and we made our way up a deep sandy track, 
bordered by clumps of herb agrimony and fennel and hem- 
lock, with viper’s bugloss and sea-poppy blooming in the 
gentle dusk of night at our feet. We turned when we 
reached the summit of this sandy incline and looked back. 
All Hallows, vague and enormous, lay beneath us in its 
hollow, resembling some natural prehistoric outcrop of 
that sea-worn rock-bound coast; but strangely human 
and saturnine. 

The air was mild as milk—a pool of faintest sweetnesses 
—gorse, bracken, heather; and not a rumour disturbed 
its calm, except only the furtive and stertorous sighings 
of the tide. But far out to sea and beneath the horizon 
summer lightnings were now in idle play—flickering into 
the sky like the unfolding of a signal, planet to planet— 

241 


All Hallows 


then gone. That alone, and perhaps too this feeble 
moonlight glinting on the ancient glass, may have ac- 
counted for the faint vitreous glare that seemed ever and 
again to glitter across the windows of the northern tran- 
sept far beneath. And yet how easily deceived is the 
imagination. This old man’s talk still echoing in my 
ear, I could have vowed this was no reflection but the 
glow of some light shining fitfully from within outwards. 

The old man paused beside a flowering bush of fuchsia 
at the wicket gate leading into his small square of country 
garden. ‘You'll forgive me, sir, for mentioning it; but 
I make it a rule as far as possible to leave all my troubles 
and misgivings outside when I come home. My daughter 
is a widow, and not long in that sad condition, so I keep 
as happy a face as I can on things. And yet: well, sir, 
I wonder at times ifi—if a personal sacrifice isn’t incum- 
bent on them that have their object most at heart. Vd 
go out myself very willingly, sir, I can assure you, if 
there was any certainty in my mind that it would serve 
the cause. It would be little to me if ”” He made 
no attempt to complete the sentence. 

On my way to bed, that night, the old man led me in 
on tiptoe to show me his grandson. His daughter watched 
me intently as I stooped over the child’s cot—with that 
bird-like solicitude which all mothers show in the pres- 
ence of a stranger. 

Her small son was of that fairness which almost sug- 
gests the unreal. He had flung back his bedclothes—as 
if innocence in this world needed no covering or defence 
—and lay at ease, the dews of sleep on lip, cheek, and 
forehead. He was breathing so quietly that not the least 
movement of shoulder or narrow breast was perceptible. 


242 





All Hallows 


“The lovely thing!” I muttered, staring at him. 
“Where is he now, I wonder?” His mother lifted her 
face and smiled at me with a drowsy ecstatic happiness, 
then sighed. 

And from out of the distance there came the first pro- 
longed whisper of a wind from over the sea. It was 
eleven by my watch, the storm after the long heat of the 
day seemed to be drifting inland; but All Hallows, ap- 
parently, had forgotten to wind its clock. 


243 


The Wharf 


=S|HE gave a critical pat or two to the hand- 

| some cherry bow, turning her head this 
way then that, as she did so; pulled 
balloonishly out its dainty loops; then 
once more twisted round the small figure 
with its dark little face and dancing 
burning eyes, and scanned the home-made party frock 
from in front. 

“What does it look like, mother?” the small creature 
cried in the voice of a mermaid: then tucked in her chin 
like a preening swan to see herself closer. The firelight 
danced from the kitchen range. There was an inch of 
snow on the sill of the window, and the evergreen leaves 
of the bushes of euonymus beyond bore each its platter- 
ful of woolly whiteness. 

“Please mother. What does I look like?” the chiming 
voice repeated ; “my frock?” 

With that wearer within it, it looked for all the world 
like the white petals of a flower; its flashing crimson 
fruit just peeping out from beneath. It looked like 
spindle tree-blossom and spindle berries both together. 
And the creature inside danced up and down with the 
motion of a bird on its claws, at sight, first, of the grave 
intentness and ardour and love in its mother’s eyes; and 
next, in expectation of the wonderful party, which was 


244 





The Wharf 


now floating there in the offing like a ship in full sail 
upon the enormous ocean. 

“Then I look nice, mother, nice, nice, nice?” she cried. 
And her mother smiled with half-closed eyes, just as 1f 
she were drinking up a tiny little glass of some strange 
far-fetched wine. 

“You are my precious one,” she said, still gazing at 
her. “And you will be very good? And eat just a little 
at a time, and not get over-excited ?” 

“Oh dear, oh dear,” cried the mite, her dark face turn- 
ing aside in dismay like a tiny cloud from the sunrise; 
“they won’t never, never be done dressing.” 

“There, now, be still, my dear,” her mother pleaded. 
“You mustn’t excite yourself. Why, there they are, you 
see, coming down the stairs.” 

And when the three—the two elder fair ones and this 
—were safely off, she returned to the fire, knelt down 
to poke it into a blaze, and then reclining softly back 
upon her heels, remained there awhile, quite still—brood- 
ing on a distant day indeed. 

Something had reminded her of a scene—a queer little 
scene when you came to think of it, but one she would 
never forget, though she seldom had even the time to 
brood over it. And now there was one whole long hour 
of peace and solitude before her. She was with herself. 
It was a scene, even in this distant retrospect entangled, 
drenched, in a darkness which, thank Heaven, she could 
only just vaguely recall. To return back even in thought 
into that would be like going down into a coal-mine. 
Worse; for “nerves” have other things to frighten one 
with than merely impenetrable darkness. The little scene 
itself, of course, quite small now because so far away, 


245 


The Wharf 


had come afterwards. It shone uncommonly like a star 
on a black winter night. And yet not exactly winter; 
for cold wakens the body before putting it to sleep. And 
that time was like the throes of a nightmare in a hot still 
huge country—a country like Africa; enormous and sinis- 
ter and black. 

And so, piece by piece, as it had never returned to her 
before, she explored the whole beginning of that strange 
experience. She remembered kneeling as she was now, 
half sitting on her heels, and looking into a fire. A 
kitchen fire, then, as now; though not this kitchen. And 
not winter, but early May. And behind her the two elder 
children were playing, in their blue overalls, the fair hair 
gently shimmering in the napes of their necks as they 
stooped over their toys. It was, of course, before this 
house, before tiny Nell had come—dark and different 
from her two quiet sisters. And yet—good gracious me, 
how strange things are! 

As now at this moment, she had been alone in that 
kitchen, even though the children were there. And alone 
as she had never been before. It seemed as though she 
had come to the end of things—a vacant abyss. Her 
husband had gone on to his work after having been with 
her to the doctor. She remembered that doctor—a taci- 
turn, wide-faced man, who had listened to her symptoms 
without the least change of countenance, just steadily 
fixing his gray eyes on her face. Still, however piercing 
their attention, and whatever the symptoms, they could 
only have guessed at the horror within. 

And then her husband had brought her home again, 
and after consoling her as best he could, had gone off 
late and anxious to his work, leaving her in utter despair. 
246 


The Wharf 


She must go away at once into the country, the doctor 
had said, and go away without company : must leave every- 
thing and rest. Rest! She had hated the very thought 
of the country: its green fields, its living things, and 
the long days and evenings with nothing to do; and then 
the nights! Even though a farm was the very place in 
the world she would have wished to have been born in, 
to live in, and there to die, she would be more than ever 
at the mercy there of those horrors within. And country 
people can stare and pry, too. They despise Londoners. 

The extraordinary thing was that though her husband 
had reeled off to the doctor, as if he had learned it all 
by heart, as if he wanted to get rid of it once and for 
all, the long list of her symptoms, the one worst symptom 
of them all he had never had the faintest glimpse of. His 
pale face, that queer frown between his eyebrows and the 
odd uncertain way in which he had moved his mouth as 
he was speaking, though they showed that, though he was 
talking by rote, or, rather, talking just as men do, with 
the one idea of making himself. clear and business-like, 
were yet proof too of what he was feeling. But not a 
single word he had said had touched her inmost secret. 
He hadn’t an inkling that her awful state, body and soul, 
was centred on him. 

She could smile to herself now to think what contor- 
tions the body may twist itself into when anything goes 
wrong inthe mind. That detestation of food, those dizzy- 
ing moments when you twirl helplessly on a kind of va- 
cant devilish merry-go-round; that repetition of one 
thought on and on like a rat in a cage; those forebodings 
rising up one after the other like clouds out of the sea in 
an Arabian tale. Why, she had had symptoms enough 

247 


The Wharf 


for every patent medicine there was. She smiled again 
at thought of her portrait appearing in the advertisements 
in the newspapers for pills and tonics, her hand clutch- 
ing the small of her back, or clamped over a knotted fore- 
head. 

Still, though she quite agreed now, and had almost 
agreed then, that it had been wise to see the doctor, and 
though she agreed now beyond all telling that she owed 
him what was infinitely more precious even than life it- 
self; still she hadn’t breathed to her husband one word 
about that dream; not a word. And never would. Not 
even if she lay dying, and if its living horror came to her 
then again—though it never would—in the hope of crush- 
ing her once for all, utterly and for ever. 

It was something no one could tell anybody. There 
were vile things enough in the world for every one to 
read and share, but this was one not even a newspaper 
could print, simply because she supposed no one could 
realise except herself how abject, how unendurable it was. 
Perhaps this was because it was a dream, she wondered. 
Dreams are more terrible than anything that happens in 
the day, in the real world. 

A gentle quietude had descended upon her face lit up 
by the firelight there. It was as if the very thought of 
a dream had endued it with the expression of sleep. Nor, 
of course, was there anything to harm her now. This 
was yet another mystery concerning the life one’s spirit 
lives in a dream, in sleep. The worst of haunting dreams 
may lose not only its poison, its horror, it may even lose 
its meaning, just as dreams of happiness and peace, in the 
glare and noise of day, may lose the secret of their beauty. 
Not that this particular dream had ever lost its mean- 
248 


The Wharf 


ing. It had kept its meaning, though what came after 
had completely changed it—turned it outside in, so to 
speak. 

And now, since she was sane and “normal” again, just 
the mother of her three children, with her work to do, 
and able to do it—the meanings did not seem really to 
matter very much. You must just live on, she was think- 
ing to herself, and do all you have to do, and not push 
about or pierce too much into your hidden mind. Leave 
it alone; you will be happier so. Griefs come of them- 
selves. They break in like thieves, destroying as they 
go. No need to seek them out, anticipate them! 

But what a mercy her husband had been the kind of 
man he was—so patient over those horrible symptoms, so 
matter-of-fact. It was absurd of the doctor to try to 
hurry him on, to get testy. Clever people are all very 
well, but if her husband had been clever or conceited he 
would have noticed she was keeping something back— 
might have questioned her. And then she would have 
been beyond hope—crazy. 

And that, of course, put one face to face with the un- 
answerable question: Was what she had seen real? 
Was there such a place? Were there such dreadful 
beings? After all, places you could not see had real exis- 
tence—think of the vast mountainous forests of the world 
and the deserts and all their horrors! And perhaps after 
death? . . . For a while the white-faced clock on the wall 
overhead, hanging above the burnished row of kitchen tins, 
ticked out its seconds, without so much as one further 
thought passing in her mind. The room was deliciously 
warm; all the familiar things in it were friendly. This 
was home. And in an hour or two her husband would 


249 


The Wharf 


return to it; and a little later their three girls: the two 
fair ones, with the little dark creature—tired probably 
and a little fretful—between them. And life would be- 
gin again. 

She was happy now. But thinking too much was un- 
wise. That had really been at the root of her Uncle Wil- 
lie’s malady. He could not rest, and then had become 
hopelessly “silly”’—then, his “visitors!’ What a com- 
fort to pretend for a moment to be like one of those empty 
jugs on the dresser; or, rather, not quite empty but with 
a bunch of flowers in one! And a fresh bunch every 
day. If you remain empty, ideas come creeping in—as 
horrible things as the “‘movies” show; prowling things. 
And in sleep, too, one’s mind is empty, waiting for dreams 
to well in. It is always dangerous—leaving doors ajar. 

And so—she had merely come round to the same place 
once more. But now, and for the first time since that 
visit to the country, she could afford to face the 
whole experience. It was surprising how its worst had 
evaporated. It had begun in the March by her being 
just “out of sorts,” overtired and fretful. But she had 
got better. And then, while she was going up to bed 
that night—seven years ago now—her candle had been 
blown out by a draught from the dark open landing win- 
dow. Nothing of consequence had happened during the 
evening. Her husband had been elated by a letter from 
an old friend of his bachelor days, and she herself had 
been doing needlework. And yet, this absurd little acci- 
dent to her candle had resembled the straw too many on 
the camel’s back. 

It had seemed like an enemy—that puff of wind: as if 
a spectre had whispered, “Try the dark!” And she had 
250 


The Wharf 


sat down there on the stairs in the gloom and had begun 
to cry. Without a sound the burning tears had slowly 
rolled down her cheeks as if from the very depths of 
her life. “So this was the meaning of everything!” they 
seemed to tell her. “It is high time you were told.” The 
fit was quickly over. The cold air at the landing window 
had soothed her, and in a moment or two she had lit her 
candle again, and, as if filled with remorse, had looked 
in on her two sleeping children, and after kissing them, 
gone on to bed. 

And it was in the middle of that night her dream had 
come. After stifling ‘in her pillow a few last belated 
sobs, lest her husband should hear her, she had fallen 
asleep. And she had dreamed that she was standing alone 
on the timbers of a kind of immense Wharf, beside a 
wide sluggish stream. There was no moon, and there 
were no stars, so far as she could remember, in the sky. 
Yet all around her was faintly visible. The water itself 
as if of its own slow moving darkness, seemed to be 
luminous. She could see that darkness as if by its own 
light: or rather was conscious of it, as if all around her 
was taking its light from herself. How absurd! 

The wharf was built on piles that plunged down into 
the water and into the slime beneath. There were flights 
of stone steps on the left, and up there, beyond, loomed 
what appeared to be immense unwindowed buildings, like 
warehouses or granaries; but these she could not see very 
plainly. Confronting her, further down the wharf, and 
moored to it by a thick rope, floated on the river a huge 
and empty barge. There was a wrapped figure stooping 
there, where the sweeps jut out, as if in profound sleep. 
And above the barge, on the wharf itself, lay a vague 

251 


The Wharf 


irregular mass of what apparently had come out of the 
barge. 

It was at the spectacle of the mere shape of this foul 
mass, it seemed, that she had begun to be afraid. It 
would have horrified her even if she had been alone in 
the solitude of the wharf—even in the absence of the 
gigantic apparition-like beings who stood round about it; 
busy with great shovels, working silently in company. 
They, she realised, were unaware of her presence. They 
laboured on, without speech, intent only on their office. 
And as she watched them she could not have conceived it 
was possible to be so solitary and terrified and lost. 

There was no Past in her dream. She stood on this 
dreadful wharf, beside this soundless and sluggish river 
under the impenetrable murk of its skies, as if in an 
eternal Present. And though she could scarcely move for 
terror, some impulse within impelled her to approach 
nearer to discover what these angelic yet horrifying 
shapes were at. And as she drew near enough to them 
to distinguish the faintly flaming eyes in their faces, and 
the straight flax-coloured hair upon their heads, even the 
shape of their enormous shovels, she became aware of 
yet another presence standing close beside her, more 
shadowy than they, more closely resembling her own 
phantom self. 

But though it was beyond her power to turn and con- 
front it, it seemed that by its influence she realised what 
cargo the barge had been carrying up the stream and 
had disgorged upon the wharf. It was a heap, sombre 
and terrific, of a kind of refuse. The horror of this 
realisation shook her even now, as she knelt there, the 
flames of the kitchen fire lighting up her fair blonde face. 
252 


The Wharf 


For, as if through a whisper in her consciousness from 
the companion that stood beside her—she knew that this 
refuse was the souls of men; the souls not of utterly vile 
and evil men (if such there were; and no knowledge 
was given to her of where their souls lay or where the 
blessed) but of ordinary nondescript men “wayfaring 
men, though fools.” Yet nothing but what seemed to be 
a sublime indifference to their laborious toil and to its 
object, showed on the faces of the labourers on the 
wharf. 

Perhaps if there had been any speech among them, 
or if any sound no more earthly than echo in her imagina- 
tion—of their movements had reached her above the 
flowing of that vast dark stealthy stream, and above the 
scrapings on the timbers of the shovels, almost as large 
as those used in an oast-house, she would have been less 
afraid. 

But this unfathomable silence seemed to intensify the 
gloom as she watched; every object there became darker 
yet more sharply outlined, so that she could see more 
clearly, up above, the immense steep-walled warehouses. 
For now their walls too seemed to afford a gentle 
luminosity. And one thought only was repeating itself 
again and again in her mind: The souls, the souls, of 
men! The souls, the souls, of men! 

And then, beyond human heart to bear, the secret mes- 
senger beside her let fall into consciousness another seed 
of thought. She realised that her poor husband’s soul 
was there in that vast nondescript heap; and those of 
loved-ones gone, wayfarers, friends of her childhood, her 
girlhood, and of those nearer yet, valueless, neglected— 
being shovelled away by these gigantic, angelic beings. 


253 


The Wharf 

“Oh, my dear, my dear,” she was weeping within. And, 
as with afflicted lungs and bursting temples she continued 
to gaze, suddenly out of the nowhere of those skies, two 
or three angle-winged birds swooped down and alighting 
in greed near by, covertly watched the toilers. 

And one, bolder than the rest, scurried forward on 
scowering wing, and leapt back into the air burdened 
with its morsel out of that accumulation. The sight of 
it pierced her being in this eternity as if that morsel were 
her own. And suddenly one of the shapes, and not an 
instant too soon, had lifted its shovel, brandishing it on 
high above his head, with a shrill resounding cry— 
“Harpy!” 

The cry shattered the silence, reverberated on and on, 
wharf, warehouse, starless arch, and she had awakened: 
had awakened to her small homely bedroom. It was 
bathed as if with beauty by the beams of the nightlight 
that shone on a small table beside her bed where used 
to sleep her three-year old. It was safety, assurance, 
peace; and yet unreal. Unreal even her husband—his 
simple face perfectly still and strange in sleep—lying 
quietly beside her. And she—lost amid the gloom of her 
own mind. 

Tell that dream—never, never! But yet now in this 
quiet firelight, so many cares over—and, above all, that 
dreary entanglement of the mind a thing of the past— 
what alone still kept the dream a secret was not so much 
its horror, but its shame. The shame not only that she 
should have dreamed such a dream, but that she should 
as it were have seen only its horror and had become its 
slave. 

To have believed in such a doom; to have supposed that 


254 


The Wharf 


God . . . But she could afford to smile indulgently now 
at this weakness and cowardice and infidelity. She 
could afford it simply because of Mr. Simmonds, the 
farmer. That was the solemn, the really-and-truly amus- 
ing truth. It was that rather corpulent, short, red-faced 
Mr. Simmonds who had been responsible for the very 
happiest moment in her life: who had saved her, had saved 
far more even than her “reason.” 

Her husband, of course, knew how much they owed 
to his kindness. But he did not know that he owed Mr. 
Simmonds her very heart’s salvation, if that was not a 
conceited way of putting it. And yet it was this Mr. 
Simmonds—she laughed softly out loud as she gazed on 
into the fire—it was this Mr. Simmonds who had at first 
sight, in his old brown coat and mud-caked gaiters, re- 
minded her of a potato! Of a potato and then an apple, 
one of those cobbled apples, their bright red faded a little 
and the skin drawn up. His smile was like that, as dry 
as it was sweet like cider. 

What an interminable Sunday that had been before her 
husband and the two children had said good-bye to her 
at the railway station. How that man in spectacles had 
stared at her over his newspaper. Then the ride in the 
trap, her roped box behind, and Mrs. Simmonds, and the 
farm. Two or three times a day at least she had rushed 
out in imagination to drown everything in the looking- 
glass-like pond among the reeds not very far from the 
farm, And yet all the time, though Mrs. Simmonds 
knew she was “queer,” she could not possibly have 
guessed, while she was talking to her of an evening in 
the parlour, the things that were flaring and fleering in 
her mind like the noises and sights of a fair. 

255 


The Wharf 


The doctor had said—looking at her very steadily: 
“But you won’t, you must remember, be really much 
alone, because you will have your home and your children 
to think of. You will have them. Think as little as 
possible about everything else. Just rest, and be looked 
after.” 

The consequence of which had been the suspicion that 
she was being not merely “looked after’ but watched. 
And she would openly pretend to set out from the farm 
in another direction when she was bent on looking once 
more at her reflection in the pond. None the less she had 
remembered what the doctor had said, had held on to it 
almost as if it had been a bag she was carrying and must 
keep safe. And by and by in the hayfields, in the lanes 
by the hedges, she had begun to be a quieter companion to 
herself and even glad of Mrs. Simmonds’s company, and 
of talking to her plump brown-haired daughter, or to the 
pale skimpy dairy-maid. 

It was curious though that, while passing the opening 
in the farm-wall she had never failed to cast a glance to- 
wards that dark distant mound with its flowers beyond 
the yard, she had never really noticed it. She had seen 
it, even admired its burden, but not definitely attended 
to it. It had taken her fancy and yet not her eye. She 
had been far less conscious of it, for example, than of 
the pretty Jersey heifer that was sometimes there, and 
even of the tortoiseshell cat, and the cocks and hens, and 
of the geese in the green meadow. 

All these she saw with an extraordinary clearness, as 
if she were looking at them from out of a window in a 
strange world. They quieted her mind without her being 
aware of it, and she would talk of them to Mrs. Sim- 
256 


The Wharf 


monds partly because she was interested to hear about 
them ; partly to keep her in the room; and partly so that 
she might think of other things while the farmer’s wife 
was talking. Of other things indeed!—when first and 
foremost, like a huge louring storm-cloud on the horizon 
of a sea, there never left her mind for a single moment 
the memory and influence of her dream. It would sweep 
back on her, so much distorting her face and clouding her 
eyes that she would be compelled to turn her head away 
out of the glare of the parlour lamp, in case Mrs. Sim- 
monds should notice it, 

And then came that calm, sunlit afternoon. She had 
had quiet sleep the night before. It had been her first 
night at the farm untroubled by sudden galvanic leaps 
into consciousness and by the swarming cries and phan- 
tom faces that appeared as soon as her tired-out eyes hid 
themselves from the tiny radiance of the nightlight. 

She had been for a walk—yes, and to the reed-pond— 
and had there promised her absent husband and her two 
children never to go there again unless she could posi- 
tively bear herself no longer. She had promised; and, 
quieted in mind, she was coming back. She remembered 
even thinking with pleasure of the home-made jam that 
Mrs. Simmonds would give her for her tea. 

There was no doubt at all, then, that she had been 
getting better—just as before (when the dream came) 
she had been really, though secretly, getting worse. And 
as she was turning in home by the farm-gate, she saw 
Nellie, the heifer, there; the nimble young fawn-haired 
creature, with its delicate head and lustrous eyes with their 
long lashes; and she had advanced in her silly London 
fashion, with a handful of coarse grass, to make real 


257 


The Wharf 


friends with her. The animal had sidled away and then 
had trotted off into the farmyard, and she had followed 
it with an unusual effort of will. 

The sun was pouring its light in abundance out of the 
west on the whitewashed walls and stones and living crea- 
tures in the yard; midges in the air, wagtails, chaffinches 
in the golden straw, a wren scolding, a cart-horse in 
reverie at the gate, and the deep black-shadowed holes of 
the byres and stables. 

Still eluding her, Nellie had edged across the yard; 
and it was then that, lifting her eyes beyond the retreat- 
ing creature, she had caught sight of that mound, now 
near at hand, and had realised what it was. She had 
realised what it was almost as if because her dream had 
instantly returned with it, almost as if the one thing were 
the “familiar” of the other. But the horror now was more 
distant. She could not even (more than vaguely, like re- 
flection in water) see those shapes with the shovels simply 
because what she now saw in actuality was so vivid and 
lovely a thing. It was a heap of old stable manure; and 
it must have lain there where it was for a very long 
time, since it was strayed over in every direction, and was 
lit up with the tufted colours of at least a dozen varieties 
of wild-flowers. Her glance wandered to and fro from 
bell to bell and cup to cup; the harsh yet sweet odour of 
the yard and stables was in her nostrils: that of hay was 
in the air; and into the distance stretched meadow and 
field under the sky, their crops sprouting, their green 
deepening. 

And as she stood, densely gazing at this heap, she her- 
self it had seemed became nothing more than that picture 
in her eyes. And then Mr. Simmonds had come out and 
258 


The Wharf 


across the yard, his flannel shirt-sleeves tucked up above 
his thick sun-burned arms, and a pitch-fork in his hand. 
He had touched his hat with that almost school-boyish 
little gentle grin of his ; then when he noticed that she was 
trying to speak to him, had stood beside her, leaning on 
his pitch-fork, his glance following the direction of her 
eyes. 

For a moment or two she had been unable to utter a 
syllable for sheer breathlessness, and had turned her face 
aside a little under its wide-brimmed hat, stammering on, 
and then almost whispering, as if she were a mere breath 
of wind.and he a dense deep-rooted oak-tree. But he had 
caught the word “flowers” easily enough. 

There must have been at least a score of varieties on 
that foster-mothering heap; complete little families of 
them: silver, cream, crimson, rose-pink, stars and cups 
and coronals, and a most marvellous green in their leaves, 
all standing still together there in the windless ruddying 
light of the sun. And Mr. Simmonds had told her a 
few of their country names, the very sounds of them like 
the happy things themselves. 

She had explained how exquisitely fresh they looked 
—not like street-flowers—though she supposed of course 
that to him they were mere waste—just “wild” flowers. 

And he had replied, with his courteous “ma’ams” and 
those curiously bright blue eyes of his in his plain plump 
face, that it was no wonder they flourished there. And 
as for being “waste,” why, they were kind of enjoying 
themselves, he supposed, and welcome to it. 

He had been amused, too, in an almost courtly fashion 
at her disjointed curious questions about the heap. It 
was just “stable-mook”; and the older that is, of course, 


259 


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the better. It would be used all right some time, he as- 
sured her. The wild flowers, pretty creatures, wouldn't 
harm it; not they. They’d fade by the winter and be- 
come it. Some were what they called annuals, he ex- 
plained, ‘and some perennials. The birds brought the 
seeds in their droppings, or the wind carried them, or the 
roots just wandered about of themselves. You couldn't 
keep them out of the fields! That was another matter. 
You see there you had other things to mind. And with 
that charlock over there! .. .” 

And still she persisted, struggling as it were in the 
midst of the dream vaguely hanging its shrouds in her 
mind, as if towards a crevice of light to come out by. 
And Mr. Simmonds had been patience and courtesy itself. 
He had told her about the various chemical manures they 
used on the crops. That was one thing. But there was, 
she gathered, what was called “nature” in this stuff. 
It was not exactly the very life of the flowers, for that 
came you could not tell whence, it is the “virtue” in it. 
It and the rain and the dew was just as much and as 
little their life-blood—their sap—as the drink and vic- 
tuals of humans and animals are. “If you starve a 
lad, ma’am, keep him from his victuals, he don’t exactly 
flourish, do he?” 

Oh yes, he agreed such facts were strange, and, as 
you might say almost unknowledgable. A curious thing, 
too, that what to some seems just filth and waste and 
nastiness should be the very secret of all that is most 
precious in the living things of the world. But then, 
we don’t all think alike; “’t wouldn’t do, d’ye see?” 
Why, he had explained and she had listened to him as 
quietly as a child at school, the roots of a tree will bend 
260 


The Wharf 


at right angles after the secret waters underneath. He 
crooked his forefinger to show her how. And the grop- 
ing hair-like filaments of the shallowest weed would turn 
towards a richer food in the soil. “We farmers couldn't 
do without it, ma’am.” If the nature’s out of a thing, 
it is as good as dead and gone, for ever. Wasn’t it now 
the “good-nature” in a human being that made him what 
he was? That and what you might call his very life. 
“Look at Nellie, there! Don’t her just comfort your eye 
in a manner of speaking ?” 

And whether it was Mr. Simmonds’s words, or the 
way he said them, as if for her comfort—and they were 
as much a part and parcel of his own good nature as 
were his brown hairy arms and his pitch-fork and the 
creases on his round face; or whether it was just the calm 
copious gentle sunshine that was streaming down on them 
from across the low heavens, and on the roofs and walls 
of the yard, and on that rich brown-and-golden heap of 
stable manure with its delicate colonies of live things 
shedding their beauty on every side, nodding their heads 
in the lightest of airs; she could not tell. At that very 
moment and as if for joy a red cock clapped his wings 
on the midden, and shouted his Qui vive. 

At this, a whelming wave of consolation and under- 
standing seemed to have enveloped her very soul. Mr. 
Simmonds may have actually seen the tears dropping from 
her eyes as she turned to smile at him, and to thank him. 
She didn’t mind. It was nothing in the world in her 
perhaps that he would ever be able to understand. He 
would never know, never even guess that he had been her 
predestined redemption. 

For a while they had stood there in silence, like figures 

261 


The Wharf 


in a picture. Nellie had long since wandered off, grazing 
her way across the meadow. She had now joined the 
other cows, though she herself was but a heifer, and had 
not yet calved or given milk. How “out of it” a Lon- 
doner was in country places! Her very love of it was a 
kind of barrier between herself and Mr. Simmonds. 

And yet, not an impassable one. Knowing that she was 
“ill,” and being a “family man,” and sympathetic, he had 
understood a little. She had at last hastened away into 
the house; and shutting her door on herself, had flung her- 
self down at her bedside, remaining there on her knees, 
with nothing in the nature of a thought in her mind, not 
a word on her lips; conscious of no more than an in- 
credibly placid vacancy and the realisation that the worst 
was over... 


The kitchen fire had lapsed into a brilliant glow, un- 

broken by any flame. Her lids smarted; she had stared 
so long without blinking into its red. She must have 
been kneeling there for hours, thus lost in memory. Her 
glance swept up in dismay to the clock; and at that in- 
stant she heard the scraping of her husband’s latch-key 
in the lock—and his evening meal not even so much as 
laid yet! 
_ She sprang to her feet and, stumbling a little because 
one of them had “gone to sleep,” met him in the door- 
way. “I am late,” she breathed into his shoulder, put- 
ting her arms round his neck with an intensity of greet- 
ing that astonished even his familiar knowledge of her. 
“But there were the children to get off. And then I 
just sat down there by the fire a minute. Jim: don't 
think I’m never thankful. You were kind to me that time 
262 


The Wharf 


I was ill. Kinder than ever you can possibly think or 
imagine. But we won't say anything about that. 

Her arms slipped down to her sides; a sort of absent- 
ness spread itself over her faintly-lit features, her cheeks 
flushed by the fire. “I’ve been day-dreaming—just think- 
ing: you know. How queer things are! Can you really 
believe that that Mr. Simmonds is at the farm now, this 
very moment?” Her voice sank lower. “It’s all snow; 
and soon it will be getting dark; and the cows have been 
milked; and the fields are fading away out of the light; 
and the pond with the reeds. . . . It’s still; like a dream 
and now... .” 

And her husband, being tireder than usual that after- 
noon, cast a rather dejected look at the empty table. But 
he spoke up bravely: “And how did the youngsters get 
off? They must have been a handful!” 

He smoothed her smooth hair with his hand. But she 
seemed still too deeply immerged and far-lost in her mem- 
ory of the farm to answer for a moment, and then her 
words came as if by rote. 

“<A handful’? They were—and that tiny thing !—I 
am sometimes, you know, Jim, almost afraid of those 
wild spirits—as if she might—just burst into tiny pieces— 
into bits some day—like glass. It’s such a world to have 
to be careful in!” 


263 


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8 RANLEY STREET. 
S.W. 2. 

: yoy DEAR JAMES,— 

SE You remember that night we stayed 
| up talking—a week or two before Christ- 
mas, wasn’t it? Anyhow, not very long 
after I came back from America. It was 
a good talk—the kind that always re- 
minds me of old sherry and bath olivers (yours the 
Amontillado) ; but there came a moment in it when— 
well, bubbles began to rise. It was soon after Bettie had 
looked in—tilting us that queer half-derisive glance 
women always reserve for men surprised in their natural 
haunts and habits. She gave us up in despair, said good- 
night, and went off to bed. At that moment, I remem- 
ber, you were humped up over the fire and knocking 
out your pipe on the bars of the grate; and you remarked 
between the two halves of a yawn: “So you didn’t have 
any actual adventures, then? Worth talking about, I 
mean ?”’ 

I smiled to myself as I looked at you through the 
smoke. Worth talking about! Perhaps, if you had been 
the least bit less complacent and insular you would have 
noticed that I made no reply. Your taken-for-granted 
was, of course, first, that I am not the sort of creature 
264 





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to whom anything worth happening happens, and next, 
that in any case things worth happening are not in the 
habit of happening “over there.” 

But in this particular case, you were wrong on both 
counts. At least, so I think. And from the moment 
when—as we steamed gently on—half-suffocated with 
home-sickness, I caught my first glimpse of the low-lying 
lovely emerald of the Isle of Wight through a placid haze 
of English drizzle, I have been pining to share with you 
what I am going to tell you now. It sounds a little ab- 
surd to say that a promise given in America made this 
impossible until the day before yesterday; but so it is. 
But now that is done with. The whole episode is over 
and done with—so far at least as anything can be done 
with in a world where even the whirr of a grasshopper 
never ceases to echo. 

I suppose the smile with which I met your question was 
a sort of lie—a colourless one, I hope. But even if I 
had answered you with the bare facts—you wouldn’t have 
believed me. Probably you won’t believe me now— 
though you are bound to confess human nature rarely 
writes a letter of this length merely to deceive without 
gain! And as you are off on Tuesday, and I shan’t see 
you for weeks, this had better not wait. 

Then again, it’s a little habit of yours to assume that life 
in these days is all but played-out and that the only things 
worth much consideration are of the mind or by way of 
books. In other words, that the really raw material of life 
is fit only for the newspapers, the police-courts, and the 
“movies.” Ina way I agree with you. I agree, I mean, 
that events are only of importance in relation to our 
Selves. If they make no appeal to the imagination, that 


265 


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is, they are mostly null and void. Now the amusing 
thing (at least, I suppose it is amusing) is that my 
American adventure is as raw as pickled cabbage. It is 
precisely the stuff that films and shockers are made of. 
I can see—for I have returned from their fountain-head 
—the appropriate newspaper headlines. I believe you will 
agree too that it is of the “twopence coloured” variety, 
rather than the “penny plain’; and it continues to haunt 
me. 

I don’t see how things without any “meaning’’—what- 
ever that may mean—can do that. On the other hand, 
I can’t be quite sure even of what I mean by its meaning. 
Still, there are things in life that drop like stones into a 
dark subterranean pool. One leans over, listens to the 
reverberations, hears them die away, looks up—and the 
grass is of a livelier green than ever, the sky of an in- 
credible blue, and the butterfly on a tuft of thrift nearby 
a miracle. 

What follows then is merely a plain and precise ac: 
count. It is not intended to titillate your fastidious taste 
in style. You need not even bother to read it if you feel 
disinclined. But if you do read it, I should like a word 
later on concerning one or two points in it that will sug- 
gest themselves; and this, by the way, is the first word I 
have breathed on the subject to a living soul. ... 


Time: Late October; Scene: U. S. A. 


By a piece of real good fortune I had been staying a 
day or two a little South—South of Washington, at any 
rate. For I saw the country. I had then been in 
America about seven weeks. If I use the phrase “Ameri- 
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can hospitality” you will probably shrug your thick shoul- 
ders and smile. The actual fact is, though, that that hos- 
pitality is (a) sincere; (b) boundless; and (c) may set 
one speculating a little closely on the English variety. 
From out of the bosom of one family into which I had 
been welcomed without the smallest hesitation or fore- 
thought I had sent on a letter of introduction to yet 
another American friend from English friends of mine: 
the usual kind of letter with the usual kind of remarks 
concerning the bearer. 

The answer came by return of post. In brief: Would 
I give the signatories—husband and wife—the inex- 
pressible happiness of remaining their guest for the rest 
of my days on earth. I had discovered from a map that 
they were living thirty miles or so beyond a fairly large 
town across country still further South and West—I am 
not going to mention any names yet. I set out. And as 
I was still only a novice in the land where a twenty-four 
hours’ railway journey is looked upon as a jaunt one can 
enjoy between tea and supper, the novelties were for me 
novelties still. 

The green-upholstered armchair in the vast metallic 
Pullman car, for example; the sound of the voices; the 
cut of the faces; the ecstatic bill of fare in the dining- 
car—you write your order on a slip—Turkey and Cran- 
berries, Chicken Pie, Six-inch Oysters, Green Corn on 
the Cob (eaten monkey fashion), the divinest Scallops in 
the world: and Prices to match! Then, too, the courteous 
white-laundered waiters with hands and faces ranging 
from blackest ebony to creamiest cream; the ice; and, of 
course, the landscape. On and on. 

Rather neglected-looking woods and fields; suggesting 

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that they are still-scared by the encroachments of civilisa- 
tion; maize (“Corn”) in stook; pumpkins (punkins) in 
heaps ; running water; wooden houses; and the occasional 
town—with its ancient buggy; its drug-store; its Fords 
(early fourteenth-century) ; and the dread knolling of the 
engine’s bell—surely, apart from that monster’s prehis- 
toric trumpetings, the saddest sound in Christendom— 
as one’s huge metallic caravan edges slowly through Main 
Street. 

I am an excellent traveller, for throughout any jour- 
ney in unknown parts I am in a continual effervescing 
state of anxiety and foreboding. I invariably expect to 
go astray, and as invariably hope, yet dread, that I shall. 
But you can’t (any more than your baggage) go far 
astray on any American railway, provided you can under- 
stand what the “conductor” says. 

All went well. The black fellow, smiling on me like 
Friday’s long-lost father, gave me my “‘brush-off” (not 
brush-up or brush-down, you will notice), and I (a little 
shamefacedly) gave him a quarter. He took out my suit- 
case—my grip—he let down the clanging steps, and de- 
posited the wooden stool beneath them. I descended. 
And there, with open arms and angelic faces, stood two 
strangers who, as quickly as you can switch on an electric 
light in a dark room, were at once my friends—and for 
life, I hope. We got into their car; it was latish after- 
noon; and in about half an hour were at their house. I 
had been talking so hard to my hostess that I had caught 
scarcely a glimpse of the view, though I had absorbed it 
through my pores, none the less. 

It was rather a queer meal, that first diane that eve- 
ning. I remember talking nineteen to the dozen and 
268 


The Lost Track 


noticing how unusually brilliant a sparkle the silver and 
glass had, and also how much more violent my head- 
ache was than it had been in the train. I recalled the 
heated frequency of my visits to the little ice-water reser- 
voir in the railway carriage. You drink it out of a small 
envelope. I got to bed, however, without saying any- 
thing. But next morning there was no disguising the 
fact that I had a rollicking temperature, pains in the 
limbs, aching at the back of the eyes and so on: all the 
usual symptoms. 

Did my host and hostess tack me up instantly in a 
piece of old sacking, replace me in their car, and dump 
me down on the nearest goods platform? Not a bit of 
it. Nor did they pour oil and smuggled wine into my 
wounds and pass me on with twopence to the nearest inn- 
keeper. They stood on either side of the bed, irradiated 
with delight. Now, if a stranger from over the seas were 
taken ill in my house, I should first assure him what an 
exquisite privilege and joy it would be to nurse him 
back to health again. And then I should go downstairs 
and muse gently how pitiful it is that mortality may be 
subject to ills so inconsiderate. 

Not so my friends in America (and no names yet, so 
we will call them Flora and John). They were enrap- 
tured. Their eyes shone with triumph as they brandished 
the thermometer. If you’d only die, they all but assured 
me, we'd give you a costlier funeral than ever was on 
sea or land. Bricks, both of them. 

The doctor—the doc—came, saw, and sent me a bottle 
of medicine. It was ’flu, of course, and for days together 
I lay there, in Luxury’s ample lap, looking out from my 
bed through a window over the countryside, reading 


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Isabel Ostrander, Freeman Wills Crofts, with interludes 
of O. Henry, nibbling grapes, and imbibing beef-juice 
—not to speak of oysters and champagne (think of it!) 
in due season. 

I had come for a week-end. It was six days before 
I was up again. On the eighth I was “down.” Even 
then, said the doctor, I must not yet attempt to go on my 
travels. He knew his patrons. His veto was followed 
by a chorus of delicious “Surelies!” from Flora and John. 
By the Wednesday of that week I was horribly normal, 
and being taken for walks and drives. The following 
Friday, my host and hostess were booked for a visit them- 
selves. Did they speed the parting guest? Not they. 
They insisted that I should stay on at their house until 
they came back. Was I quite sure that I should be per- 
fectly happy and comfortable? The servants were, with 
one exception, black, but comely. Did I really mind be- 
ing left alone? It was hateful of them to have to go; 
they would never forgive themselves, but ... I hesi- 
tated, languished, and gave way. | 

Allons, once more. Now, in the first place, I suppose 
you suppose there isn’t any “country” in the United 
States? There are excuses for you, because I myself 
had read a good many American novels without fully 
realising what country there is; and till then I had seen 
chiefly cities. But, gracious heavens, what country! 
Here, it was a little like a beautiful kind of Wiltshire or 
Somerset; but vaster, stretching leagues and leagues away 
to Columbus knows where, and still all but virgin: virgin- 
ally free, virginally romantic. 

It was October, you will remember, and I had chanced 
on one of the loveliest Falls since the Mayfower landed 
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The Lost Track 


its pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. I was by this time as 
right as a trivet again, though still conscious of the queer 
novelty and unexpectedness in things which even a slight 
illness produces, especially “flu. Every mere man sup- 
poses, of course, that a rising temperature is a summons 
to the grave. Mine had proved only a caveat, and I 
was at once roving around in the little two-seater that 
Flora and John had handed over to me for my special 
recreation. 

They left the house on a Friday afternoon, and on the 
next my adventure began. I must have trundled on at 
haphazard about fifteen or twenty miles or so, having 
turned off from the State road perhaps ten minutes after 
I left the house, and having clean forgotten that the area 
of the two Virginias is more than half as large as Eng- 
land. The lane or by-road in which I then found myself 
had grown steadily more and more like a cart-track, and 
ever wilder and lovelier. Apart from the incessant mul- 
titudinous rasping of the grass-green katydids and crickets 
—some brilliantly coloured that fly for a few yards at a 
stretch—the air was marvellously still over those low 
hills of fading woods. Above them hung a pale blue 
afternoon sky, brimmed with sunshine of a gentle and 
mellow intensity, its shafts eddying silken soft through 
the dells and dingles around me; shafts, discs, splashes, 
gilding the very marrow in my bones, surfeiting my eyes 
and bathing me with delight—a satisfaction, by the way, 
not discounted by the thought of the weather you were 
probably enduring at home. 

And the colours! Our English autumn, poor beloved 
sweetheart, is a comparative child in such matters. Here 
the trees—oak, dogwood, maple, hickory, sumach—mas- 

271 


The Lost Track 


querade for weeks together in coats that would have made 
Jacob weep aloud: amber-yellow, coral-pink, a wondrous 
rose, blood-red—Bluebeard red. Mounting in cones and 
domes and triangles above the grayish grass and the sand- 
colour of the soil, they draped the hills around me, while 
the track steadily edged off out of civilisation, and I 
went bobbing over its boulders and chasms like a Jack- 
in-a-box or a monkey-on-a-stick. The only fellow hu- 
man I had passed—and that was miles behind—was an 
old negro with a grizzled head who was leading a long- 
eared mule attached to a low, faded, red-and-green farm- 
cart. | 

I had come to a patch of flattish ground just wide 
enough to afford me turning room. I got out, intending 
to push on a few paces beyond a turn in the track in order 
to get a glimpse of what lay beyond. And, looking down 
from there into the gully below, I saw—now what do you 
think ?—not a dryad, not a Sioux camp counting its scalps, 
not a chorus of blackamoors around a keg of rum—but a 
fragment of abandoned railway line—a phrase, by the way, 
that amuses our American cousins. There were but 
twenty yards or so of it in sight, and it was not exactly 
in spick-and-span order. The gauge was narrow. The 
steel rails had been torn up. Only the rotting sleepers 
remained, matted with weeds and bordered with Queen 
Ann’s lace, golden rod and Michaelmas daisy. A row of 
telegraph poles (never neat and spruce like ours, but un- 
gainly and crooked) held only one cross-bar each, and 
that adorned with two bright-green twinkling insulators. 

In that country of distances, netted over by scores of 
thousands of miles of railroads (see Whittaker or The 
World’s Almanac) on which for ever pound monsters 
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The Lost Track 


that would set an antediluvian pterodactyl gaping, this 
narrow derelict strip looked immeasurably aged, forlorn, 
and romantic. I was a bit tired, too; and of course that 
helps. One’s fancy grows a little greedy after illness. 
Having glanced round for traces of poison-ivy, I sat 
down on a hump of rock to look at it. 

The line, as I say, led out of a gully and into a gully. 
And anything, my dear James, which, like Life itself, 
emanates from no discernible whence, and vanishes out 
into no detectable whither, is—well, you notice it. My 
heart leapt up when I beheld that derelict below. And 
gently, without any warning, as I sat staring downward, 
there entered upon it, as if moved by clockwork, a man in 
a cloak and a hat. The eyes under that hat’s brim were 
bent upon the sleepers as he stepped rapidly on from 
one to another. He was not tall; the inch of cheek I could 
see was waxy pale; and his hands were out of sight. 
He just glided on from sleeper to sleeper: was gone. The 
clockwork had removed him out of my sight again. It 
reminded me of a toy I had as a child. 

Why this commonplace spectacle interested me to such 
a degree I can hardly say. He might have been a 
phantom. The sun shone on. The katydids continued 
their courting and their concert; though come but one 
touch of frost, and as if at the flick of a conductor’s 
baton, that annual harvest festival instantly ceases. 
Death no more than wags once an icy finger. 

The only other sound was that of shallow running 
water, and the cry (I think) of mockingbirds. Two 
things instantly occurred to me: first, I at once badly 
wanted to follow up the track in the direction from which 
the human just gone had appeared; and next, I felt a 


273 


The Lost Track 


curious apprehension at doing so. There was something 
in the effect of him oddly exotic and dubious. He stirred 
vague remembrances of the “movies,” and—now I come 
to think of it—of no less a man of genius than Mr. 
Charles Chaplin. Have you ever noticed, by the way, 
how singularly appropriate a name Charles’s Chaplin is 
for that inexhaustibly melancholic and unworldly joy of 
the universe? Whatever he wears, he always appears to 
be in dead black, and his face looks out like a Child of 
Mercy from fold upon fold of dingiest crape. What a 
Hamlet, what an Iago awaits his enterprise! Anyhow, 
the sight of that cousin of his twenty-times-removed 
down there, stepping between the flower-bushes under the 
emerald-studded poles and blood-red branches, had a slight 
flavour of the preternatural. The warmth of the sun too 
was beginning to dwindle and evening was coming on. 
That afternoon I ventured no further—merely waited 
until my phantom was well out of hearing before I got 
into John and Flora’s two-seater again and started up 
the engine. 

All that evening—windows wide open with their gauze 
casing to the lofty pillared porch of the house, I sat 
reading ‘and at the same time thinking of that strip of 
railroad-track and the odd creature in the gully. I rather 
fancy I dreamed of him most of that night. 

Happy and copious as ever, the sun rose again next 
morning, and by two o’clock in the afternoon I was well 
on my way to my trysting-place. A little reflection had 
washed out the grotesque apprehension of the day before. 
None the less, when I got to the end of the wheel marks 
left by my car on the previous day, I had a good look 
round before I ventured down into the gully. Once there, 


274 


The Lost Track 


on I went. It was impossible at any moment to see more 
than thirty yards in front of me, because of the winding of 
these narrow valleys between their hills. The line had 
evidently been laid for the conveyance not of animate but 
of inanimate matter. 

I had gone about a mile or so when a little clicking 
noise in the distance broke the hush. I at once scrambled 
off the track into the cover of the trees, and waited. It 
may have been the dislodging of a stone or the crack of 
a dry stick I had heard, for in a while two figures ap- 
peared: my friend of yesterday and an old stooping negro 
with a sack on his back. Age has particularly tragic 
effects on the black: his almost greenish cheeks were 
sunken in, his lamb’s-wool hair was nearly white, he had 
a hump on his back, and his long flat feet brought him 
along with a sort of shuffling trot, for his companion was 
making no allowances. 

He himself was in the cloak and hat of yesterday; a 
man, I should guess, of about thirty-eight to forty, sal- 
low, beardless, with a high nose and a stoop. His eyes 
were unflinchingly fixed on the ground, and I wondered 
if he would notice any signs of a trespasser. While within 
hearing this oddly matched pair exchanged not a single 
word. I watched them out of sight and went on. 

The track at last twisted almost at a right angle, and 
I found myself surveying what might have been a natural 
break in the hillside, and what were clearly the relics of 
an abandoned quarry. And a little this side of its fur- 
ther horn I saw a house. Like all solitary houses, it stood 
up there in the silence under the blue-bowled sky mute 
with its own story. Its front side was at an angle with 
me: it was sideways on, I mean. The few windows I 


275 


The Lost Track 


could see were shuttered; its timbers dangled with leafy 
wisps of brilliantly-dyed creeper—vines as they are called 
more picturesquely over there. 

It was a house of three stories, rather lanky in look; its 
blue paint was faded, though it showed no traces of decay. 
_None the less, it had a deserted, almost forlorn appear- 
ance. Indeed with that semi-precipitous background, and 
beneath its fringes of gaudy woodland, it was exactly the 
species of house one would expect to find as the terminus 
of a dismantled railroad—a railroad obviously intended 
for the conveyance of the stone, or whatever it might be 
was quarriable, among these hills. 

There was a something else in the aspect of the house 
a good deal more difficult to describe, though this effect 
may in part have been retrospective. It looked (I can’t 
quite explain it) as if it were the headquarters of Some- 
body or Something. It looked like an old woman with 
vanishing tinged-up traces of the beauty she once en- 
joyed—as if it had had a past. Indeed I should guess it 
was well over a hundred years old. Apart from that— 
as if the lady still insisted on dressing to her past—the 
flat ground in front of it was densely carpeted with con- 
volvuluses (Morning Glory): a living mat of a myriad 
tiny silent trumpets; bright blue, red, purple, slashed, 
striped, parti-coloured. A ravishing sight to see! 

I stayed there, drawn back a little out of view of the 
windows, watching the house for some little time. A few 
large black heavy birds, of the crow kind apparently, were 
circling sluggishly over the trees above. There was no 
particular reason to hesitate to go on, and “Trespassers 
will be Prosecuted” is a sign that one sees far less rarely 
in America than “Live wire: keep off!” But if the four 
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last words had been scrawled up in paint on the nearest 
tree they would not have seemed inappropriate. Indeed 
if I had supposed the gentleman in the cloak was within, 
I should have turned back. He looked inhospitable. 
But he was safely “out” it seemed, and for at least half 
an hour or so. So at length I went on. 

Taking into consideration what I am going to tell you 
in a minute or two, it is proof of the solitude and isola- 
tion of the house that when I came round to the further 
side of it, past the main porch, there was an open door; 
and just within, on a table, were a few pieces of old 
silver and of oriental porcelain that would have made a 
Duveen’s mouth water. They looked singularly incon- 
gruous, somehow. And still there was no symptom or 
rumour of life whatever, though near-by stood a shed 
containing an immense heap of pumpkins, beside which lay 
an old bridle and a bill-hook. 

There could be no harm in enquiring my way and ask- 
ing for a drink of water. I rapped on the open door, 
and waited. Beyond it was a narrow staircase; but not 
a picture on the walls, not a shred of carpet on the boards. 
After waiting a few minutes I edged in a little, and 
peeped into a room. That, too, was empty, except for 
a rusty stove and a bowlful of brilliant fairy-like miniature 
gourds on the chimneypiece, as gay as a child’s paint-box. 
Curtains, quite clean, and yet as if they had come from 
Nottingham twenty years ago and had been undisturbed 
ever since, hung at this window. ‘This was evidently an 
entrance seldom used. 

Not a sound came from within, and at last—it was my 
first attempt at housebreaking, and I still blush for it 
—at last I could resist the temptation no longer. After 


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one hasty glance outside to make sure that master and 
man were not returning, I crept rapidly up the stairs. To 
this moment I can’t conceive what induced me to make 
such a venture. The call of the wild, I suppose! 

The first flight gave only on to shut doors, and for 
the moment I dared not risk opening any; but continued 
the ascent instead. And at the top of the next flight I 
came to a room that was evidently a man’s room. It 
contained some old bits of rather uncouth but pleasant 
Colonial furniture, and a good many books. If the house 
had any central heating apparatus it was evidently not 
yet in use; the room was coldish. Shutters were over one 
of the windows, and it smelt stuffy and of old cigar 
smoke. 

It was nevertheless a pleasant and well-proportioned 
room with a curious air of serenity in spite of the gentle- 
man who some sixty or seventy years ago had painted 
the portraits on the walls and had achieved only daubs 
and caricatures. There were four or five of them at 
least, and they looked across at me with a fixed unsmiling 
astonishment, and a mute “And who are you?” 

Some primitive embroidery and Indian beadwork lay 
here and there, and over the fireplace another strip of it. 
At the further end of the room was a door ajar. This 
evidently led off to the rest of the house, but at this 
—at my—end of the room, and not three paces away, was 
yet another door opening inwards and partially concealed 
by a sort of old dresser with a few books and knick- 
knacks on its shelves. This had been drawn aside and 
not replaced. My heart gave a thump or two at sight 
of it, for as likely as not someone might be sitting within 
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The Lost Track 


—and what reception would he be likely to give an inter- 
loper like myself? Still innocence is innocence all the 
world over, and can be brazen at that. Again I listened, 
then stepped across the faded carpet, tapped, paused, 
and looked in. 

I found myself on the threshold of a room in area 
about six yards or so by four, and low-ceiled. Its walls 
were roughly whitewashed and there was but one half- 
obscured window, over which gauze mosquito frames 
were fixed. It was cold, still, and empty: except that in 
each of the four corners of the ceiling a small gilded 
seraph in rough carved wood hung suspended with out- 
stretched wings. The bowed heads of these seraphim 
were directed inwards towards a gilded image of the sun 
in the midst of the ceiling, its rays radiating outwards, 
like the design on a mariner’s compass. There was but 
one piece of furniture in the room—a table, and in the 
centre of it was what appeared to be a plain ebony box 
inlaid with silver and ivory. 

I stood in that twilight with eyes fixed on this small 
box—the distant whirring of the grass-hoppers in the 
flowers and sand below the only sound to be heard. The 
secret, the kernel, the meaning of these peculiar surround- 
ings must lie concealed in this box, I thought. It fas- 
cinated me. 

Influenza (have you ever noticed it?) is apt to leave 
behind it a phlegmatic audacity. One does not seem 
to mind much what happens next; because, I suppose, 
one’s nerves are fatigued and yet excited after its dose of 
poison. But this situation in any circumstances was out 
of the common—that abandoned track, the exotic details, 


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the huge fall of rock, the faded ungainly house amid its 
marvellous carpeting of convolvulus. And at last, this 
shrine. 

Remember, too, that I was a stranger and that this was 
Virginia; the old old Virginia of Raleigh and the planta- 
tions, of Old Joe and the minstrels; of the aristocratic, 
defeated, gallant, romantic Southerners! A nobler spirit 
than mine would, of course, have at once withdrawn in 
shame and regret at such a trespass, such sheer effrontery. 
Instead, still intent on the slightest whisper of sound in 
the house beneath me, I stepped over, laid my fingers on 
the ebony case and lifted it. 

It was as though at a gesture I had pushed aside a tiny 
shutter between this world and Paradise. Instantly the 
room in which I stood was suffused to its uttermost angles 
with a gentle unsurpassable radiance—a radiance of a 
faint lovely lilac-blue, resembling in colour the flickering 
summer lightning one occasionally sees in our English 
thunder-storms. How much of this effulgence was its 
own and how much a condensation of the twilight from 
the muffled window I cannot tell; but it proceeded, at 
any rate, from a diamond that now lay revealed in the 
middle of the table on its low carved ebony stand. It 
was a diamond in size and shape rather like a flat-ended 
apple—flat at the base, I mean; and in its cutting a 
blunted cone. 

Well: I never hope to make you realise the curious 
solemnity of this experience. Without much “fire” or 
coruscation this marvellous gem icily burned there— 
burned there with its own imprisoned radiance and with 
borrowed reflections of the waning day. It shone so 
softly it might have been asleep. And as I watched it 
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lying there in the midst of the wooden table, not a thought 
entered my mind except that of its surpassing beauty 
in this plain whitewashed setting, mused over by its 
guardian seraphim and plumb beneath that raying out- 
spread sun. Maybe, apart from the fact of its mere actu- 
ality, there was nothing very remarkable in this; even a 
green field in sunshine wears an almost incredible radiance, 
and human faces now and then seem to be illuminated as if 
from within. Even the plainest and commonest ob- 
ject is capable of a seemingly miraculous metamorphosis, 
given the moment of insight. 

However that may be, without realising it, I must for 
a few moments have slipped into a kind of trance or 
daydream in mere contemplation of the thing. Sum-m- 
ject and om-m-ject, as Coleridge used to say: here we 
were: en rapport. Neither then nor since, I may as 
well tell you, have I for an instant coveted to possess 
that object. There is a limit even to the instinct of 
acquisitiveness. You might as well plot to embezzle the 
evening star. 

Well, there I stood, all but lost to my surroundings, 
and lost to shame; and, in this condition, low and soft 
yet quite distinct, I heard the sound of a voice near at 
hand yet as if out of nowhere. It was addressing me. 
It had said, “Hands up!” 

On my honour, I assure you, just like that. In a low, 
even, unaffected tone: “Hands up!’ Almost as per- 
functorily as one might call softly to a child, “Take care!” 
or to a friend (if one were less fastidious in the use of 
English than you are), “So long!” For an instant I 
suspected that the conscience which makes cowards of 
us all had been the victim of an illusion. And then, 

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still with the wooden case between my fingers, I turned 
my head over my shoulder and saw a woman standing 
in the doorway. Saw her, indeed!—in that light! 

She looked rather taller than she actually was, maybe 
because the faded blue dress she wore with its full skirts 
fell to her ankles. Her face was long and narrow, 
with high cheekbones; her hair, smooth and parted in 
the middle, was of a dull gold and tied in a knot at the 
neck, Beneath it, over blue eyes steadfastly, fixed on 
mine, arched unusually dark eyebrows. ‘These, too, and 
her eyelashes had a little gold in their dark, like that of 
her hair. 

For moments together we gazed at each other eye to 
eye—utter strangers, yet sharing the common memories 
of all humanity. And in her hand—and quite in the 
approved fashion of the “golden remote wild west’”— 
she held a small but effective-looking revolver. 

It is curious how flatly one reads of these lethal 
weapons—Brownings, Colts, and suchlike—in a news- 
paper. As a literary device they were long since ex- 
hausted, but yet no melodrama, no movie, is complete 
without them. I remember one even in one of Henry 
James’s stories, and incredibly odd it looked in the en- 
vironment of his style. None the less, when such things 
actually come poking into one’s private life, the novelty 
is complete. 

On the other hand, I can honestly say that I was not 
in the least dismayed or alarmed. I suppose the sum- 
mons of those quiet lips had conveyed to my mind no 
active meaning—and that in part maybe because that sum- 
mons had been so remote from my personal vocabulary. 
But only in part, for immediately after that prolonged 
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exchange of looks between us, there was in a sense no 
need to understand it. Our spirits, our revenants, our 
secret sharers, or whatever one means by such words, had 
exchanged greetings in their secret tongue; and further 
explanations would be but without need. 

There we were, we two human beings, in by far the 
loveliest place I have ever seen on earth, beyond change, 
beyond decay, its beauty awakening only incredulity and 
wonder in the presence of this miracle of serenity and 
light. What on earth at such a moment could anything 
practical matter—even a bullet in your stomach. Mere 
self—that horrible Ego one talks about, perched inside 
one, like the blackened anatomy of a crow—seemed to 
be of no importance. I was hardly even thinking. I 
glanced at the sinister little round black hole of the re- 
volver and then looked straight up again into this stranger’s 
face, and knew I was smiling. 

The one thing I hesitated to do, queerly enough, was 
to hide the thing between us from view. I realised in- 
stinctively that any such action would put the two of us 
on an entirely different footing. At present we were 
quits, so to speak; discoverer and discovered; hunter and 
quarry; pilgrim and priestess. Then she would have the 
supreme advantage. For after all, mine was the most 
abjectly contemptible “case.” 

Instead, I put the box down on the table beside the 
precious stone, and began to explain myself. I told her 
precisely how I had come to be found there in these— 
compromising circumstances. I nodded, still smiling, at 
the jinnee on the table. It was unlikely I should wish to 
run away with that, I explained. I was completely at 
her mercy, of course, and under her orders. But... 

283 


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Remember, too, that she too was there—in that par- 
ticular place, and in those particular circumstances; and 
therefore of a curious loveliness, though she was no longer 
young. Indeed any object, living or inanimate, rare or 
common, could not but be transmuted, essentialised, in 
that gentle lustrous light. And I realised not only that she 
was not now thinking of the situation in itself, but also 
that my account of myself was now of minor importance. 
Even further—she was not in the least concerned I could 
see, with what I should like to call the sanctity of the place. 
An odd word to use, perhaps; but still, I stick to it. Yet 
as for me, so for her, this experience was something en- 
tirely unforeseen; even though she must again and again 
have rehearsed in fancy a similar eventuality. But it had 
never been one quite like this. In that at least we were at 
one. 

“You are not an American?” she questioned me—her 
first question. And she still kept the revolver in true 
alignment. “You are English?” 

This surprised me, for I had not yet observed in any 
of my remarks to her that anything was “nice” or “aw- 
fully jolly.” And most English visitors in America sup- 
pose that such little peculiarities as these betray them. 

I explained that I was on a visit; that I had come along 
the little railway. 

“What for?” she said. 

My shoulders shrugged themselves of their own voli- 
tion, but I managed to suggest that my presence there was 
chiefly due to curiosity—to curiosity and delight in the 
beauty of the American countryside as it showed to an 
English visitor who had never so much as dreamt of its 
existence. Then again the derelict track and this house 
284 


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—her house; its effect, its atmosphere. It had resembled 
the experience, in the gray of night at sea, of looking 
up across dark dawn-lit tumbling water, and there! an 
abandoned ship floating above its shadow, almost within 
hail; appealing, mysterious. I agreed that this was chiefly 
because I was a stranger to her part of the world; and 
added, “a queer kind of stranger, too.” Then I re- 
marked once more that the house was fascinating. 

“Fascinating!” she echoed, listening to me with in- 
tense attention; and there was more in the cadence and 
timbre of the word than a whole sheet of this notepaper 
could express. It suggested to me that she was desperately 
sick of the place; that she longed to be quit of it; that 
she loathed this secluded life; that she was all but be- 
yond being delighted or surprised by anything. At least, 
that is how it seemed to me at the time. And it filled 
me with dismay. I realised at once that her light, at 
any rate, had for years been unintermittently concealed 
and (as she supposed) wasted. All this, of course, passed 
only vaguely through my mind at the moment, but it was 
true, none the less. Her square masterful hand dropped 
to her side, and the full faded blue skirt at once con- 
cealed it, and what it held. 

“Tf my husband had found you here like this,’ she 
went on in restrained and slightly trembling tones, “I 
doubt if you would have got away again. So far as I 
know—apart from ourselves and our two old negro serv- 
ants—there isn’t a living creature on earth who has seen 
that.’ A barely perceptible shrug indicated what she re- 
ferred to. ‘He does not wish it to be seen.” She said 
it as if it were an edict of the Cesars. “I don’t see why 
you came here at all. What right have you? But never 

285 


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mind. He hasn’t seen you yet. And I shall take the 
risk of not telling him. And you meanwhile—well, I 
am assuming that you, on your side too, will say nothing 
of all this; of what you have seen. But that being so, 
we must—I must—talk to you again. No visitors ever 
come here ; though occasionally we go into the town. But 
when I was small, just the first eight years of my life, I 
lived in England. And so——” She took a deep breath 
and broke off—a blank desolation had swept gently over 
her face. Her eyes looked at me almost as if she were 
frightened. 

These were not her actual words, of course; they are 
only the nearest I can get to remembering them. But I 
remember her. We had remained in the same position 
while we had been talking—she in the doorway, I at the 
table, the wooden creatures above us concentrating their 
gaze upon us both. I remember how low we kept our 
voices, and the queer physical and mental restraint that 
seemed to have come over me, due in part, no doubt, to 
her unusual personality. 

But only in part, for meanwhile the unwasting radiance 
of that other inmate of the room seemed to be conferring 
a curious saliency and meaning on even the commonest 
object within its “sweet influences.” It was as if the 
light it shed were a kind of divination. For after all, 
the meaning and beauty of anything depends on who is 
looking at it. Imagine an intelligence resembling in its 
serene lucidity that stone! Imagine what this life on 
earth would be to us humans if never sun or moon or star 
had been in heaven to stir its dark. I can’t put into 
words what I mean; but in a sense surely the light of the 
mind and that of the world without are in definite rela- 
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tion one with the other, and in a sense interdependent? 

Whether or not; this particular radiance patterned the 
rough distemper of walls and ceiling behind the pendant 
images with the loveliest of coloured shadows, softly 
transmuted their faded gilt, revealing even the knots and 
gtaining of their wood, and that of the painted window- 
frame. It glowed softly on every several thread of a 
spider’s web that hung from tip of seraph’s wing to 
‘cornice. All this—the very texture of that threadbare 
blue dress—seemed to be symbols of an indecipherable 
yet enthralling message. As for the wearer of that dress, 
I seemed to be gazing at her far rather as though she 
were a work of art than one of nature—the tiny arch 
of her lip, the curve of her nostril, the line of eyelid and 
temple, the sheen of her eyelashes, and every facet of 
the cut-steel brooch of coloured gems she wore at 
her breast. They had become manifest and significant 
in a fashion that—well, only Rembrandt could tell you 
how. 

No portrait I have ever seen bears comparison in mem- 
ory with that solitary figure. Yet it was not her own 
beauty that was the marvel. My eye travelled in fascina- 
tion up and down the double row of little pearl buttons 
that decorated the border of her bodice, and I sighed. 
Even the criss-crossed cotton with which they had been 
sewn on seemed to be letters of some secret rune. 

Smile on, sardonic creature; but you'll agree that it’s 
difficult to describe a state of mind. We went on talk- 
ing after that almost like casual visitors at a religious 
ceremony, and, on my part, not wholly unconscious of 
the indecorum in so doing. She was asking me ques- 
tions, chiefly, I fancied, to gain time while she continued 

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to reflect on other matters. Anyhow, she showed little 
interest in my replies to them. At last there came a 
pause. She turned her face away towards the gauze- 
blurred window—the marvel of merely watching her 
there: the translucent eye-ball, the capable hand now 
visible again, the arch of the head, the golden separate 
hairs! The very thought of interruption at this moment 
of utter serenity filled me, with dismay. But there !— 
however closely I try to put the’ experience into words, 
something remains that evades me. I can merely hint 
at it. An unknown power or presence was between us 
compared with which we were objects no more no less 
meaningful than were those dangling wooden seraphim 
compared with our own sensitive and miraculous humanity. 
My God, how we have debased and defiled even the foun- 
tains of our nature. What fools we humans are in our 
anxious restlessness of mind and body. Only still waters 
reflect the skies. 

“I think perhaps you had better go now,” she said 
presently, as if half to herself. “Would you please 
cover the thing up, and we will arrange when and where 
we are to meet again.” 

She turned back on me. “You see, it would at least 
be as well for you to hear definitely if my husband finds 
any evidence of your having been here.” 

It was sheer bravado, of course, but there was nothing 
to reply to that except that I was perfectly willing— 
even eager—to await his return. She looked fixedly at 
me, and gently shook her head. — 

“Better not,” she said, and for the first time smiled. 
“That would be four to one.” The words haunt me. 

But then so too do those of “O Keith of Ravelston, the 
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sorrows of thy line!’’ and so too do “Bare ruined choirs 
where late the sweet birds sang,” and so too do “Cover her 
face ; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.” What are we to 
make of ourselves while we are the slaves of such in- 
cantations as these? 

There was no need to argue the question. And yet, 
I wonder. I replaced its ebony hood over the diamond 
as you might place a rusty extinguisher on a guttering 
tallow candle; and in that moment it seemed as if all 
interest, life and reality had vanished out of the room. 
In the dingy blur of the window the gilded images still 
showed faintly, but their office was gone, and the ceilinged 
sun became slightly Frenchified and vulgar in effect. We 
ourselves had returned to the condition of just two or- 
dinary human beings, self-conscious, slightly compromised, 
so to speak, who yet seemed to have passed through an 
overwhelming experience together. That at least was my 
impression. I cannot even guess how much of it she 
shared. 

I followed her out of the room, shut the door, pushed 
back the old dresser into its place, and she led the way 
downstairs. At the foot she bade me stay where I was 
for a moment, and went out. The melodrama was over; 
the limelight had been extinguished, and these were the 
jaded wings. 

I stood there looking out of the doorway. A change 
had passed over the scene in my absence. The sun was 
gone; it must by now be nearly set. The matted carpet 
of convolvulus showed only a surface of sombre green 
and gray; every gaudy little trumpet having wreathed it- 
self into an everlasting silence, its day ended. It was 
absurd; but at sight of them (their beauty gone but their 


289 


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true creative service beginning) a sort of disillusionment 
and regret came over me—that I had ever been decoyed 
not only into trespassing in these particular wilds, but 
into the world at all. 

I got back to John and Flora’s before nightfall; meeting 
not a single human being on the way. My solitude seemed 
insipid and fatuous. I loafed from room to room in a fit 
of mental and spiritual indigestion. What I wanted of 
course was to talk to somebody, but my only company was 
the black butler, and he met every attempt I made at 
conversation with little more than an inexhaustibly genial 
but vacant grin. 

John was nothing much of a bookman, and Flora con- 
fined her reading chiefly to fiction; and I searched their 
shelves in vain for any monograph on precious stones. 
But since then I have read the subject up a little. It is 
worth while solely for its own sake. The giants of the 
species have had alluring names, and many of them such 
bloody and romantic histories they might well have been 
the creation of the evil one. 

But I might as profitably have remained resigned to my 
native ignorance. Not one of my specialists made any 
attempt to explain the human lust and infatuation pro- 
duced by such baubles. It cannot be merely on account 
of their beauty and rarity? Hardly. Burton, as usual, 
blows hot and cold in turn. “ “That stones can work any 
wonders let them believe that list ... for my part I 
have found no virtue in them.’” On the other hand, 
““They adorn kings’ crowns, grace the fingers . . . de- 
fend us from enchantments . . . drive away grief, cares, 
and exhilarate the mind.’”’ He mentions in his inimitable 
fashion the sapphire, too, that mends manners; and the 
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cheledonius (found in a swallow’s belly) that makes 
lunatics amiable and merry. But concerning the dia- 
mond he is mum. 

Browne is even more disappointing, merely citing (in 
order to dismiss it) the vulgar error that a diamond may 
be “made soft, or broke by the blood of a goat.” Charm- 
ing speculations; but alas, the mystery remains. Per- 
sonally I detest diamonds. They are hard and showy. 
They give any young and lovely human creature an air 
of meretriciousness; and merely serve to disguise and 
conceal the old and ugly. They price their wearer, and 
only the evil come alive in their baleful company. But I 
must cut this cackle—with the warning, a trifle late, per- 
haps, that this adventure of mine is nothing of a story. 
Like life itself, it will come to a full stop, but not to be 
continued in our next. Never mind. I want to get 
through with it. 


In the small hours that night—and my windows were 
thickly curtained—I discovered myself lying wide awake 
in bed, the room an oven, my mind swept and garnished, 
my body in a cold sweat. I lay, staring up into the dark, 
and the enormity of the evening’s adventure swept over 
me, Like a cadging thief I had crept into what I be- 
lieved to be an unprotected house, had made an impudent 
attempt to explore it, and had been caught in the act by 
an armed female. Vanity writhed within me like a 
wounded worm. The whole experience in those few 
hours of sleep had withered and rotted away like Jonah’s 
gourd; had become utterly vulgarised. 

In cowardly self-defence I began to consider the mo- 
tives of my strange lady, and to speculate on the value 

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of her charge. And once you invite the spectre of money, 
or of distrust, into your drowsy mind, not only sleep 
but the most precious ghost that’s in you at once de- 
camps. The very hint of money is in some degree de- 
structive of one’s peace and poise of mind. So at least 
it seems to me. Pay a man in kind—do you find him 
gloating on his earnings. Would the Hope Blue Diamond 
—that fragmentary frozen lump of violet light—have sent 
quite so many victims to a quick end if all that could be 
got in exchange for it had been beef and potatoes? 

The Young Man in Holy Orders, for example, stoop- 
ing in ecstasy over the dewy mould under that bottle- 
glassed wall that wondrous summer morning—was his 
soul’s quarry only what the Rajah’s heirloom would bring 
in hard cash? Didn’t his aspirations reach out from cash 
to kind, from symbol to substance, and then on to symbol 
again? Not that R. L. S. was much concerned with such 
niceties in that particular context. That’s what I enjoy 
in him. He tells stories; and he is only off and on a 
casuistical Scot. He amuses himself. 

Let us get back to Virginia. For hours that night I 
tossed about in John and Flora’s swans’-down guest-bed, 
prostrated with humiliation and chagrin. How much 
simpler, how much more restful an eventuality it would 
have been if my “armed female” had been the kind of 
“vamp” one would cheer to the echo in a detective story 
—a vamp decoying me on in order to give that wide-hatted 
husband of hers and the old negro a chance of digging my 
last resting-place under that tangled mat of wild convol- 
vulus? But no; a cemetery with more headstones even 
than geraniums is likelier to be my final goal. 

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In actual fact she had accompanied me a few hundred 
yards beyond the house, to see me on my way. Not a 
breath of wind had stirred between earth and evening 
sky. And apart from the chorus of grasshoppers the 
only sound that broke upon us, shrill and liquid—was the 
voices (I suppose) of the old negress singing in the back- 
ward parts of the house over a tub of washing. It was 
like a scene from a book, from an old Kentucky ballad. 
At times I wonder if the whole thing is not merely the 
memory of adream. I wish it were. 

My companion, during the few brief moments of our 
walk together, had seemed to be thinking—closely and 
rapidly. Now and again she turned as if to look at me 
or to speak to me, but desisted. I realised how anxious 
she was that I should keep my appointment with her ; and 
yet just then was baffled to see why. It was not, I feel 
sure, from any want of confidence that her secret was 
safe with me. And on my side—well, my midnight 
ruminations were made none the happier by my implicit 
trust in her. 

We arranged that she should put a couple of stones in 
a certain position near the furthest wheelmarks of the car. 
“Turn back at once,” she insisted, “if they are not there.” 
This was her last injunction. She looked me steadily in 
the face without offering her hand—her eyes as serenely 
clear with inward depths and distances as the evening sky 
itself—and we parted. 

I had failed to tell her how little time was now left 
to me. John and Flora would be back on the Tuesday 
morning. In decency I could not stay beyond the Wednes- 
day. Think of it!—to have to pack up my grip, go off 


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on my travels again, and become a normal sociable being 
in a black bow and a Tuxedo after such an experience as 
that! It was mortifying to the last degree. . 
It is still more mortifying to realise now that this ex- 
perience is to all intents and purposes finally over, that 
I haven’t the faintest desire to see the place again—the 
house I mean. J am not sure if I should ever have wished 
to think of her there—growing old, growing listless, re- 
signed. My mind becomes stupid and useless the moment 
I begin to reflect on this. Nor is it only because of what 
has happened since. The whole thing has slipped into 
my imagination, I suppose; and the imagination, as you 
yourself once observed, retains essences, not mere tinc- 
tures. And yet the whole experience remains not only 
a mortifying but a horrifying memory. If it is not ab- 
surd to say so—it terrifies me with its perplexity. 1 
could never be “happy” about it, even if—but wait. 


I started off the next afternoon—it was a Sunday, of 
course—some hours later than before. This bothered me 
a little because it would entail my returning after dark. 
And though my road by now was fairly familiar, it would 
be none too easy for me to pick it out in the dark. As 
you know, I am little short of an idiot at finding my way. 
It would be nothing but a nuisance just then to have to 
spend the night in the woods, and there were excellent 
reasons for not converting the car into a travelling pharos 
on my return journey. So I kept a sharp eye on the 
road’s turns and twistings, and having left the car some 
little distance down the hill, I followed the path past the 
track in the ravine, found the pre-arranged signal, and 
pushed on until I came to a semi-circular break in the 


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woods, well above the precipitous descent at the foot of 
which was the house. By craning forward a little under 
a weeping willow I could now get a glimpse of one 
corner of its roof. 

The evening was twin-sister to its predecessor—as quiet 
as a peep-show. Another sun-drenched day was drawing 
to its end—a day that throughout its course had re- 
mained so serene and still that one could with ease have 
counted the leaves that had fallen since its dawn. It was 
fascinating to stare at that edging of roof, realising that 
beneath it was concealed a magnet potent enough to en- 
slave every desperado and cut-throat this wicked world 
contains. 

The lady was late but made no comment on that. She 
appeared quietly at my side and must have ascended the 
ravine by some path unknown to me. For a moment or 
two in her odd way she looked at me without speaking 
while she recovered her breath. She was without a hat, 
and wore the same faded blue gown that had haunted my 
miserable dreams in the dark of the night before. She 
was naturally pale, though her skin was slightly tanned ; 
and she held herself upright as if by conscious habit. And 
if she looked at one at all, she turned her head com- 
pletely to do so—never glancing out of the tail of her 
eye. Throughout her brief talk I detected no single wile 
or trick or hint of the ancient feminine—which is in- 
tended neither as a compliment nor the reverse. One 
merely gets accustomed to things. 

Even in that dying twilight she looked a good deal older 
than I had .assumed her to be. Her face was one you 
find yourself speculating about—exploring—even while 
you are actually talking to the owner of it: those dark, 


295 


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straight eyebrows; the wide, light, open eyes; the gold- 
streaked hair. A longish face, and not easily “read,” 
explored, analysed. 

It seemed, too, to be strangely, incredibly familiar to 

‘me. It was as if we had lived together, she and I, for 
years at a stretch, had parted and had now met again 
after a prolonged absence; and yet as if that meeting had 
been a bitter disappointment and disillusionment. I can- 
not account for this except by supposing that into a mo- 
ment of acute sensibility—some sudden drop of the mind 
into the deeps—one may condense a prolonged experience. 
Imaginatively exhaust it, so to speak. That few instants’ 
intimacy had been too much for human nerves and hearts. 
I felt desperately listless, yet afflicted and aggrieved. 
Circumstances had betrayed me; I had turned from the 
first to the last chapter of my tale of mystery and some- 
how its glamour had gone. How can I explain myself? 

Circumstantially all had been well. Her husband had 
noticed nothing amiss. ‘And even live men sometimes tell 
no tales, it seems!” she faintly smiled at me. “I believed 
you would come, and yet—well of course I could not be 
certain if I should ever see you again.” 

We sat down awhile in that tepid air, beneath the bril- 
liant but now darkened autumnal branches, and she told 
me her story in her own languid, uninterested, broken 
fashion; our voices falling lower yet when, presently 
after, we rose again and wandered on a little further up 
the hill until at last we could actually see through a crevice 
of the trees (though we ourselves remained hidden) the 
window of the sanctuary itself. 

It was an outlandish story, and, like the one I am telling 


296 


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you, of the “shocker” variety. But I have no reason to 
disbelieve it. It would never occur to me indeed to mis- 
trust a single word she uttered. There was a tinge of the 
sleepwalker in all she said and did. 

The house, it seemed, had been built by the grandfather 
of the present owner, a quixotic creature who had fought 
—and fought fiercely—in the Civil War. He was killed 
early in ’65, leaving an only son, a boy of sixteen or so, 
though how this youngster had himself escaped being 
roped into the army even at that early age I don’t know. 
Until then he had been left in charge of faithful negro 
servants at home. The family was old and well-to-do 
if not wealthy, but even before the war had been slipping 
into the shade. 

The boy’s grandfather had formerly owned a large 
property further south with its usual complement of 
slaves, but had lost most of it by sheer neglect and by 
reason of his habit of wandering off on long and ap- 
parently aimless journeys over the countryside. He seems 
to have been a natural vagrant—in search of Mecca, 
maybe. 

On one of these expeditions he had chanced on this 
ravine. Its beauty and isolation alone might have been 
fascination enough, but there was also apparently some- 
thing in the soil that attracted his attention, and he dis- 
covered too that this particular “desirable site’ had once 
been the scene of a violent convulsion of nature, during 
which it welcomed a visitor more alarming (though less 
extensive in effect) than Columbus himself. 

An enormous meteorite had found here its earthly 
abiding-place. I suppose such things are not so rare as 


207, 


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one supposes. There must be scores of them in the oozy 
bed of old Ocean. There is a famous one, isn’t there, 
in the wilds of Arizona? 

It was his son, who, some time in the ’eighties, suc- 
ceded at last in blowing a huge fragment of this meteorite 
to smithereens with a stick of dynamite. No one seems 
to have had an inkling of what he hoped to discover in its 
entrails. What he did discover, however, brought his 
labours in this world to an end. Up till then the ravine 
had been used in a modest way as a stone quarry; hence 
the low-gauge railway. After the night of that explo- 
sion the industry ceased—for the owner of it had disin- 
terred from amongst the slag and refuse left by his ex- 
periment the diamond down below. It must have been 
a queer and shattering moment. The effect on him seems 
to have resembled that of a wild Southern love-affair; it 
changed his complete existence. 

At that time the lady’s husband must have been a boy 
in his early teens, and had already as a child been initiated 
into the company of this peculiar prey in what I gathered 
was little short of a religious ceremony. I can See it 
too, the narrow, dark, pallid boy open-eyed in the radi- 
ance, and the father (to judge from one of the portraits 
I saw) of the Old Abe type—an early “highbrow,” with a 
beard. Oddly enough I heard nothing of the mother, 
but whether or not she or any one else knelt there with 
these two at that ceremony, I wish Vermeer could have 
been there to paint it. This boy, no doubt as time went on, 
came to think of the stone as a kind of symbol of the 
Lost Cause—and of his lost cause. Some ghastly shock 
to nerve and mind during the war had intensified an 
hereditary bent and left him a prey to intense melancholy 
298 


The Lost Track 


and depression. It was he who had found for the gem 
its wooden sentinel seraphs and had hung up that sun 
in the shrine I have described. It seems to have become 
a refuge for his tormented spirit, the holy place not only 
of this indestructible emblem and of the ravaged South, 
but of his own half-broken insatiable spirit and possibly 
much else besides. 
I can just imagine how in these surroundings and with 
his temperament it must have vivified and infatuated 
that languid and rich Southern imagination which even 
to this day has never broken fully into flower. Fantastic, 
I admit. But remember that this thing was literally ex- 
terrestrial, a visitant from the wilds (or the serene) of 
“space,” of the unknown, of the dreamed-of. Nowadays 
we rap on a table and are presented with ectoplasm and 
similar evidences. On the other hand, all pioneers, surely, 
in their exploitations even of the material world have had 
some twist and contortion of fantasy in their minds. This 
one’s delight and desire were not in the gross world of 
the senses but in the regions of the mind. He had turned 
contemplative. It is easy to mock at him shut up up 
there, in the silence with his talisman for whole nights to- 
gether—the solitude, the intense heat of summer, the icy 
gales of winter in that aloofness from most of what we 
mean by life. But in such times as ours is it worth while? 
That black-haired creature then in saturnine cape and 
hat whom I myself had seen glide like an automaton into 
view and glide out of it again on the abandoned track 
had sucked in his father’s superstitions with his milk. 
His mind had been doubly dyed. He still secreted an 
implacable abhorrence of the North—an attitude, surely, 
nowadays only very faintly shared by any other living 


299 


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creature. But this was but one peculiar ingredient in 
the make-up of his extraordinary consciousness. Some 
day I will tell you a little more about him; but I doubt if 
my informant for an instant realised how queerly many of 
her intimate confidences that evening fell upon that cold 
calm Englishman’s ear. 

While she talked, I listened and mused. It would be 
agreed I suppose that the winning side in that cruel and 
bloody*Civil War had not hidden its own bright particular 
gems under a bushel. It has surged on from strength to 
strength. It has more diamonds to show than Beezlebub 
has flies. None the less even to-day in that vast half- 
ravished country of theirs there must be scores of half- 
hidden Koh-i-noors still waiting to be shared around— 
natural resources eagerly expecting the rap of some 
millionaire Moses’s rod to pour out their abundance into 
the lap of these Nordic adventurers. Our own poten- 
tialities are now less abundant. It is a remarkable phe- 
nomenon. It sets one thinking—the problem, I mean, 
of hoarding versus exploiting; the problem of spiritual 
intensity versus material enterprise; of imaginative in- 
tuition versus man’s mere reasoning powers. It sets me 
thinking of my own part in that afternoon’s adventure. 
That inescapable law—the immutability of one’s past! 

Down there (as we sat in our moment’s peace together, ) 
down there under cover of this shag of dusky woodlands 
lay concealed this incredible bauble which, if it emerged 
into our civilised world, would instantly knock the bottom 
out of the diamond market, and would awaken in scores of 
human hearts the vilest passion of which they are capa- 
ble. There may be nothing much in that. But why 
should the mere memory of it have affected the very life 
300 


The Lost Track 


and light of me, have sunk deep down into the depths of 
consciousness wherein all our “longings, dreams, and as- 
pirations lie.” What strange inward radiance had shone 
on me that solemn hour? The problem—absurd though 
it may sound—continues to enthral me. 

I stirred and looked round at her. For the moment 
I had not been listening. Perhaps that dark Edgar-Poe- 
like creature was even at this moment at his orisons! 
Night had been advancing while we talked and a stealthy 
moon-pale radiance lay over the wooded landscape spread 
out beneath us. And still this lady’s low uneven voice in 
her peculiarly tortuous manner continued telling me her 
outlandish story, though I knew in my heart that she was 
sick to death of the whole business. For her its interest 
had long since worn through and was now worn out. The 
situation had become an unendurable burden and obstacle. 

On the other hand, her mind was still obviously 
dominated by the presence and influence of her husband ; 
though I rather doubt from what she said—mere infer- 
ence of course—if she had ever been for more than a little 
while in love with him. The momentary bonfire had 
burned itself out or been swiftly extinguished, and she had 
slipped apparently into the part of the childless mother, 
with this egocentric fanatic for protégé. 

That is the position as it seemed to me then, as on 
reflection it seems to me now. Not that her husband was 
stark staring mad, only a little crazy. There are too few 
of his kind in this world. I wish there had been an 
opportunity of meeting the creature. Like nature with 
her sunsets, life, it seems, is beginning to mimic man’s 
movies. The more [ think of it, the more melodramatic 
the situation becomes. I hate fingering over, as Keats says, 

301 


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other people’s domesticities. But it was plain from what 
she told me that for many years past a silent, continuous, 
but none the less embittered war of the spirit must have 
been raging between these two poor human derelicts. 

Maybe she herself was a pace or two over the border- 
land. Like most people who are accustomed to solitude 
she would now and then forget as it were to go on talk- 
ing, her eyes fixed meanwhile as if in reverie or in con- 
templation of some thought or feeling which she was 
anxious but loth or unable to express. Her eyes indeed 
had that half-vacant look in their beauty of those who day- 
dream. They seemed to divine rather than observe. 
And though she uttered no word to suggest she was un- 
happy, the tones of her voice, every instinctive gesture of 
her hands, told the same tale. There are sorrows and 
misgivings in every mind which we as human creatures 
shrink from revealing—that of growing old, for ex- 
ample; of falling short of one’s poor best. But this was 
a canker much nearer home even than these. It was at 
her heart. She had been “confined into a cage” and had ~ 
long since begun to realise what that means—even though 
freedom might prove nothing but a treachery and a de- 
lusion. Then, suddenly, had appeared this interloper from 
the great Outside—and had reminded her of her child- 
hood and of England. 

I see as I write the troubled simplicity that lightened her 
face as she spoke of it. The very ghost of childhood 
returned into it. Her own small daughter, if she had 
ever had one, might have looked like that—the young 
moon in the old moon’s arms. Not, I suppose, that I am 
to blame for that, any more than the executioner’s axe is 
to blame for the mute head in the basket of sawdust. 

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She has had her revenge, too; for now as I sit here, 
wasting my time and all this ink, and return in fancy to 
her Virginia, “my heart aches and a drowsy numbness 
fills my sense, As though of hemlock I had drunk.” It 
is useless to attempt to follow the inward workings of 
one’s mind. All may seem quiet, and in repose there; and 
then you realise—by the weedy flotsam, the rollers, the 
screaming of the birds and the wreckage—the storm that 
is now over. However that may be, it is nothing but 
the truth to say that the faintest memory of her Virginia 
—the mere sound of the word makes me as homesick as 
a cat. Homesick, and I know not what else besides. 

She can’t. have foreseen that. I must have appeared 
repulsively cold and indifferent—but I hope not mistrust- 
ful. You appear what you feel, feign as you may. I 
had butted in, then; unforgivably if you consider how. 
But apart from that, and far worse, it became clearer 
and clearer to me while we talked or sat silent that she 
had seen in me her long-deferred opportunity to escape. 
It was the fate-ordained saviour come to rescue her from 
the island on which she had been so long marooned. Even 
to suggest the faintest consciousness of such a thing may 
seem incredibly raw and ugly, if not worse. But there 
it is. Remember too, that the actual rights and wrongs 
of the problem did not so much as even arise. Maybe 
I should not now be loathing myself like this if they had. 
Yet it is not exactly cowardice that kept them back. All 
I can say is that I listened to these undertones in a fever 
of disquiet and perplexity. 

I listened ; but after all, the thread that skeins up even 
the most sophisticated heart is tied only with a slip 
knot. And how I wish I could give you the faintest 

393 


The Lost Track 


notion of the marvel of that scene and night. The first 
thin silver of a crescent moon had come into the sky low 
down in the West and was being dogged by a planet glassy 
as a raindrop by candlelight. The blue above our heads 
was of a depth and brilliance that no Chinaman even has 
succeeded in putting on paper or clay. And there was I 
—the doors of understanding, of compassion, even of 
mere humanity shut and bolted—gently, insistently tempor- 
ising ; and she zigzaggedly insinuating her long-suppressed 
desires, aspirations and anxieties into my mind. : 

“What is he going to do with the thing when he goes?” 
I croaked at last. Can you imagine a more idiotic ques- 
tion in the circumstances? Think how it might have been 
taken! But the faintest subterfuge was impossible to her. 
She did not “take it” at all; she replied as simply as a 
child that the diamond was to be buried with him: “in- 
terred with his bones”! He had long since arranged, it 
seems, that the two old servants who from his infancy 
had watched over him as closely as guardian angels, were 
to dispose of his body so that not even the privy wolves of - 
Hatton Garden could dig it up again. And Providence 
itself had made this possible. 

There was a crevasse a few hundred yards beyond the 
valley beneath us. The meteor had at its impact split 
earth’s shallow, brittle crust, and this was the scar. Drop 
him and his charge into that, down there—well, it would 
be a final exit for them both. 

Time was flitting by and darkness had come before we 
rose from where we had seated ourselves at the edge of the 
track. The thick dust muffled our footsteps; the languid 
sweetness of the autumnal air was still resonant with the 
clashing cries of tiny ardent creatures exulting in their 


304 


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brief moment of life. My companion seemed to be in no 
apprehension of being missed from the house. It was 
her custom to wander in these solitudes alone in the eve- 
ning. 

I think of her there in the earlier days when love and 
marriage, when that tranquil shrine of light and loveli- 
ness, and these hills and unravished valleys were still 
new to her and still seemingly inexhaustible in romance 
and delight and promise. But now . . . For twelve solid 
months, she assured me, but one single stranger, and he 
only an enterprising hobo, had come their way; and ho- 
boes prefer a different welcome from the one this par- 
ticular hobo received. Twelve months: to her of waste 
and weariness; and I—I would all but sell my soul for 
but one week of it! 

Well, there is no more story left. She asked me, she 
seemed to expect me, to come again the following eve- 
ning. And I hadn’t the courage to tell her it would be 
my last. I half-promised to do so, realising none the 
less, I know, that it was only a half-promise and without 
much genuine intention behind it. What could I do? 
What purpose would there be? I have asked myself the 
question a thousand times. I am sick of it. 

You yourself, I am sure, would vouch for my staidness 
and respectability even to an Income Tax Inspector. But 
then you are a seasoned sophisticated wretch. You en- 
joy looking at life steadily, especially when its back 1s 
turned. But what, say, of Blanche? What would she 
have said, do you think, if, like the Good Samaritan I 
had brought the lady home in my hold-all? But that, 
yet again, does not arise. The one and only question 
that does is this: What kind of me was there for por- 


395 


The Lost Track 


ter? My old jaded mind is utterly incapable of anything 
that America would recognise as ordinary hospitality. 
And there is a hospitality of the spirit. 

You will notice I am facing the delicate situation not 
exactly with sang froid, but with a hideous insensibility. 
I am not intending that. I am trying not to excuse, not 
even to explain, but to express my feelings then—the 
most obvious being that I hadn’t the faintest wish in 
the world to enter that secret shrine again and to stand 
beneath that gilded sun. The mere thought of it was 
distasteful to the last degree. It had been an “event” in 
my uneventful existence—an initiation, a mystery, if you 
like; and it was over. 

But apart from that, I see now (though not then, I 
swear) that other hidden door, ajar: that other shrine and 
gilded sun; enraying the secrecy of this desolated crea- 
ture’s mind and heart. Whatever, too, I may have said 
to the contrary, her company was strangely moving, 
strangely exciting. And I mean the company not merely 
of her mind and personality, but of her body. There was 
something in her face, her talk, her presence, that sug- 
gested an infinity of interest and suppressed activity. 
Some human beings are not merely intensely life-giving; 
but one realises that the mystery of them is infinite 
—their reserves. You never get to the end of them. 
They may say the same thing a thousand times and it is 
always different. A Will-o’-the-Wisp or a Kindly Light, 
whichever it may be, leads you on. 

I guessed too, vaguely, the hoard of day-dreams and 
speculations which she was keeping back, which she could 
not express or had not the heart to express; which yet, 
given the opportunity, might have found their ease and 
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The Lost Track 


happiness. Let me, at risk of banality and worse, be 
even more explicit. It was as if we two, for the century 
of a passionate moment, had been in love, and that in 
that moment I myself had exhausted that strange and 
terrifying experience. And then—then, not now—so far 
as I was concerned, only ashes, ennui, disillusionment. 
And yet, I blame it less on myself than on the stone—its 
dream, its nightmare. And how could I justify that—say, 
to an English jury? It’s monstrous I should be writing 
like this ; but it must stand. 

“You will be going back to England soon?” she said 
to me after a long pause, and when we were about to say 
good-bye. I nodded, listening on and on to the broken 
syllables of that “England”; and once more silence edged 
in between us. Her face was close to mine in the dark. 
I was conscious of her breathing, that tears were in her 
eyes; conscious too of that other vision of her during 
the few minutes that had transcended these as manna 
transcends unleavened bread. If only the sistermeteorite 
of that ravished visitor below could at that instant have 
descended out of the intense inane and blotted me out. 

We parted. I did not go back. There was no op- 
portunity unless I had positively wrenched one out of the 
preposterous circumstances in which I was placed, and at 
instant risk of discovery. She would have bitterly re- 
sented any suggestion that I should share her confidences, 
however trustworthy the confidant. That was certain. 
I could not even send her a word of explanation or of 
apology. There was no address. What she thought of 
me during the weeks that followed I can only guess. It 
does not much matter now, does it? 

As a matter of fact, it was only by chance I ever heard 

307 


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of her again. The day before yesterday there came by 
post, from Flora, a newspaper already a fortnight old. 
She had marked in it a column containing the account of 
a tragedy that had recently taken place “not many miles 
distant from us.” She thought I might be “interested” 
in it, as the people concerned, though unknown to her 
personally, were neighbours of hers—as neighbours go, 
that is, in Virginia. Interested! 

There is no mistaking who these neighbours were. 
Having paused over its headlines, read the cutting I 
enclose and tell me what you think of it, and even what 
you think of me too if you feel inclined and have the 
patience. I can only assume that the one death was not 
self-inflicted, assume that—well, as I say, read it. 

To me the worst horror of the account is not so much 
that my visit may have been the occasion of some fatal 
quarrel, but that that old, hump-backed, graying negro 
was all but lynched on account of it, and that he died of 
the shock. But not, I gather, before he had consigned 
his master and his miserable talisman to the abyss pre- 
pared for them. I see it, shining there through the ages 
with only those mouldering bones on which to waste its 
paradisal radiance, that eyeless skull. But there is an 
eye of the mind, and mine is still awake. Centuries 
hence, when we and all we stand for may in turn have 
become “prehistoric,” other “humans” may find it there. 
What will those humans be like, I wonder—mind and 
body? What will be their reactions to the fire and lustre 
and communings of the thing? 

But, as I say, I am sick of the whole experience and 
of its faintest remembrances. It has been an inexpress- 
ible relief even to rid memory of it like this, to express 
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it as plainly as I can. At thought of it my mind be- 
comes like a sucked orange. “‘Traditore!’” Do you re- 
member the old gentleman in The Pavilion on the Links? 
“Traditore!’ And yet, Why? What actually did I do 
or leave undone that sickens me so? What was there in 
this unintelligible ordeal that still eludes me? 

Three or four evenings ago a friend of mine nearly 
suffocated me with the strains of a gramophone record. 
It was Alma Gluck who was singing; accompanied by a 
male chorus resembling molasses and rum. And the tune 
was :— 


“Carry me back to Old Virginny 
Dats where de cotton” [and the words elude me] “grow, 
Dat’s where de birds warble sweet in de Spring-time .. .” 


But then, I was never in Virginia in the Springtime... 


309 


Se ee ae 





A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN 
WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET 


The type in which this book has been set (on the 
Linotype) is Old Style No. 1. In design, the face 
4s of English origin, by MacKellar, Smith and 
Jordan, and bears the workmanlike quality and 
freedom from “frills” characteristic of English old 
styles in the period prior to the introduction of the 
“modern” letter. It gives an evenly textured page 
that may be read with a minimum of fatigue. Old 
Style No. I was one of the first faces designed and 
cut by the Linotype Company, and it is still one of 
the most popular. 





SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND 
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